I lately received a letter from England from a gentleman whose belief in phrenology is strongⒺexplanatory note, and who wonders why phrenology has apparently never interested me enough to move me to write about it. I have explained, as follows:

[begin page 335]

In America, forty or fifty years ago, Fowler and Wells stood at the head of the phrenological industry, and the firm’s name was familiar in all ears. Their publications had a wide currencyⒺexplanatory note, and were read and studied and discussed by truth-seekersⒶtextual note and by converts all over the land. One of the most frequent arrivals in our village of Hannibal was the peripatetic phrenologist, and he was popular, and always welcome. He gathered the people together and gave them a gratis lecture on the marvels of phrenology, then felt their bumps and made an estimate of the result, at twenty-five cents per head. I think the people were almost always satisfied with these translations of their characters—if one may properly use that word in this connection; and indeed the word is right enough, for the estimates really were translations, since they conveyed seeming facts out of apparent simplicities into unsimpleⒶtextual note technical forms of expression, although as a rule their meanings got left behind on the journey. Phrenology found many a bump on a man’s head, and it labeled each bump with a formidable and outlandish name of its own. The phrenologist took delight in mouthing these great names; they gurgled from his lips in an easy and unembarrassed stream, and this exhibition of cultivated facility compelled the envy and admiration of everybody. By and by the people became familiar with these strange names and addictedⒶtextual note to the use of them, and they battedⒶtextual note them back and forth in conversation with deep satisfaction—a satisfaction which could hardly have been more contenting if they had known for certain what the words meant.

It is not at all likely, I think, that the traveling expert ever got any villager’s character quite right, but it is a safe guess that he was always wise enough to furnish his clients character-charts that would compare favorably with George Washington’sⒶtextual note. It was a long time ago, and yet I think I still remember that no phrenologist ever came across a skull in our town that fell much short of the Washington standard. This general and close approach to perfection ought to have roused suspicion, perhaps, but I do not remember that it did. It is my impression that the people admired phrenology and believed in it, and that the voice of the doubter was not heard in the landⒺexplanatory note.

I was reared in this atmosphere of faithⒶtextual note and beliefⒶtextual note and trust, and I think its influence was still upon me, so many years afterward, when I encountered Fowler’s advertisements in London. I was glad to see his name, and glad of an opportunity to personally test his art. The fact that I went to him under a fictitious nameⒶtextual note is an indication that not the whole bulk of the faith of my boyhood was still with me; it looks like circumstantial evidence that in some way my faith had suffered impairment in the course of theⒶtextual note years. I found Fowler on duty, in the midst of the impressive symbols of his trade. On brackets, on tables, on shelves, all about the room, stood marble-white busts, hairless, every inch of the skull occupied by a shallow bump, and every bump labeled with its imposing name, in black letters.

Fowler received me with indifference, fingered my head in an uninterested way, and named and estimated my qualities in a bored and monotonous voice. He said I possessed amazing courage, an abnormal spirit of daring, a pluck, a stern will, a fearlessness that were without limit. I was astonished at this, and gratified, too; I had not suspected it before; but then he foraged over on the other side of my skull and found a hump there [begin page 336] which he called “caution.”Ⓐtextual note This hump was so tall, so mountainous, that it reduced my courage-bumpⒶtextual note to a mere hillock by comparison, although the courage-bumpⒶtextual note had been so prominent,Ⓐtextual note up to that time—according to his description of it—that it ought to have been a capable thing to hang my hat on; but it amounted to nothing, now, in the presence of that Matterhorn which he called my CautionⒶtextual note. He explained that if that Matterhorn had been left out of my scheme of character, I would have been one of the bravest men that ever lived—possibly the bravest—but that my cautiousnessⒶtextual note was so prodigiously superior to it that it abolished my courage and made me almost spectacularly timid. He continued his discoveries, with the result that I came out safe and sound, at the end, with a hundred great and shining qualities; but which lost their value and amounted to nothing because each of the hundred was coupled up with an opposing defect which took the effectiveness all out of it. However, he found aⒶtextual note cavity, Ⓐtextual note in one place; a cavityⒶtextual note where a bump would have been in anybody else’s skull. That cavity, he said, was all alone, all by itself, occupying a solitude, and had no opposing bump, however slight in elevation, to modify and ameliorate its perfect completeness and isolation. He startled me by saying that that cavity represented the total absence of the sense of humor!Ⓐtextual note He nowⒶtextual note became almost interested. Some of his indifference disappeared. He almost grew eloquent over this America which he had discovered. He said he often found bumps of humor which were so small that they were hardly noticeable, but that in his long experience this was the first time he had ever come across a cavity Ⓐtextual note where that bump ought to be.

I was hurt, humiliated, resentful, but I kept these feelings to myself; at bottom I believed his diagnosis was wrong, but I was not certain. In order to make sure, I thought I would wait until he should have forgotten my face, and the peculiarities of my skull, and thenⒶtextual note come back and try again, and see if he had really known what he had been talking about, or had only been guessing. After three monthsⒶtextual note I went to him again, but under my own namesⒶtextual note this time. Once more he made a striking discovery—the cavity was gone, and in its place was a Mount Everest—Ⓐtextual notefiguratively speaking—thirty-one thousandⒶtextual note feet high, the loftiest bump of humor he had ever encountered in his life-long experience!Ⓐtextual note I went from his presence prejudiced against phrenology, but it may be, as I have said to the English gentleman, that I ought to have conferred the prejudice upon Fowler, and not upon the art which he was exploiting.*

Eleven years ago, on board a ship bound for Europe, William T. Stead made a photograph of my right hand, and afterwards, in London, sent replicas of it to twelve palmists, concealing from them my name, and asking them to make and send to him estimates of the character of the owner of the hand. The estimates were furnished, and Stead published six or seven of them in his magazine. By those estimates I found that my make-up was about like anybody else’s; I did not seem to differ much from other people; certainly in no prominent and striking way—except in a single detail. In none of the estimates was the word humor mentioned—if my memory is not mistreating

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*Feb. 10, 1907. The English gentleman was not really a gentleman: he sold my private letter to a newspaper.Ⓐtextual note [begin page 337] me—Ⓐtextual noteexcept in one; in that one the palmist said that the possessor of that hand was totally destitute of the sense of humorⒺexplanatory note.

Two years ago, ColonelⒶtextual note Harvey took prints of my two hands and sent them to six professional palmists of distinguished reputation here in New York CityⒺexplanatory note; and he, also, withheld my name, and asked for estimates. History repeated itself. The word humor occurred only once in the six estimates, and then it was accompanied by the definite remark that the possessor of the hands was destitute of the sense of humor. Now then, I have Fowler’s estimate; I have the estimates of Stead’s six or seven palmists; I have the estimates of Harvey’s half-dozen: theⒶtextual note evidence that I do not possess the sense of humor is overwhelming, satisfying, convincing, incontrovertible—and at last I believe it myself.

The speech which I made before the copyright committees of Congress a week or two ago has arrived from Washington, in a Congressional documentⒺexplanatory note, and I will put it in here. It is pretty crazily reported, but no matter; it contains the points, and that is the essential thing.

Statement of Mr. Samuel L. Clemens.

Mr. Clemens. Ⓐtextual note I have read the bill. At least I have read such portions of it as I could understand; and indeed I think no one but a practisedⒶtextual note legislator can read thisⒶtextual note bill and thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practisedⒶtextual note legislator.Ⓐtextual note

Necessarily I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. I like the bill, and I like that proposed extension from the present limit of copyright-life of forty-two years to the author’s life and fifty years after. I think that will satisfy any reasonable author, because it will take care of his children. Let the grandchildren take care of themselves. “Sufficient unto the day.”Ⓔexplanatory note That would satisfy me very well. That would take care of my daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then long have been out of this struggle and independent of it. Like all the trades and occupations of the United States, ours is represented and protected in that bill. I like it. I want them to be represented and protected and encouraged. They are all worthy, all important, and if we can take them under our wing by copyright, I would like to see it done. I should like to have you encourage oyster culture in it, and anything else that comes into your minds. I have no illiberal feeling toward the bill. I think it is just, I think it is righteous, and I hope it will pass without reduction or amendment of any kind.

I am aware that copyright must have a term, must have a limit, because that is required by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier constitution, which we call the Decalogue. The DecalogueⒺexplanatory note says that you shall not take away from any man his property. I do not like to use the harsher Scriptural phrase, “Thou shalt not steal.” But the laws of England and America do take away property from the owner. They select out the people who create the literature of the land. They always talk handsomely about the literature of the land; they always say what a monumental thing a great literature is. In the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to crush it, discourage it, and put it out of existence. I know that we must have that limit. But [begin page 338] forty-two years is too much of a limit. I do not know why there should be a limit at all. I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit to the possession of the product of a man’s labor. There is no limit to real estate. As Dr.Ⓐtextual note Hale has just suggested, you might just as well, after you had discovered a coal mine and worked it forty-two years, have the Government step in and take it away—under what pretext?

The excuse for a limited copyright in the United States is that an author who has produced a book and has had the benefit of it for that term has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes the property, which does not belong to it, and generously gives it to the eighty-eight millions. That is the idea. If it did that, that would be one thing. But it does not do anything of the kind. It merely takes the author’s property, merely takes from his children the bread and profit of that book, and gives the publisher double profit. The publisher and some of his confederates who are in the conspiracy rear families in affluence, and they continue the enjoyment of these ill-gotten gains generation after generation. They live forever, the publishers do.

As I say, this limitⒶtextual note is quite satisfactory to me—for the author’s life, and fifty years after. In a few weeks, or months, or years I shall be out of it. I hope to get a monument. I hope I shall not be entirely forgotten. I shall subscribe to the monument myself. But I shall not be caring what happens if there is fifty years’ added life of my copyright. My copyrights produce to me annually a good deal more money than I have any use for. But those children of mine have use for it. I can take care of myself as long as I live. I know half a dozen trades, and I can invent half a dozen more. I can get along. But I like the fifty years’ extension, because that benefits my two daughters, who are not as competent to earn a living as I am, because I have carefully raised them as young ladies who don’t know anything and can’t do anything. So I hope Congress will extend to them that charity which they have failed to get from me.

Why, if a man who is mad—not mad, but merely strenuous—about race suicide should come to me and try to get me to use my large political and ecclesiastical influence for the passage of a bill by this Congress limiting families to twenty-twoⒶtextual note children by one mother, I should try to calm him down. I should reason with him. I should say to him, “That is the very parallel to the copyright limitation by statute. Leave it alone. Leave it alone and it will take care of itself.” There are only one or two couples at one time in the United States that can reach that limit. Now, if they reach that limit let them go on. Make the limit a thousand years. Let them have all the liberty they want. You are not going to hurt anybody in that way.Ⓐtextual note

The very same with copyright. One author per lustrum produces a book which can outlive the forty-two-yearⒶtextual note limit and that is all. This nation cannotⒶtextual note produce three authors per lustrum who can create a book that will outlast forty-two years. The thing is demonstrably impossible. It cannotⒶtextual note be done. To limit copyright is to take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per lustrum, century in and century out. That is all you get of limiting copyright.

I made an estimate once when I was to be called before the Copyright CommitteeⒶtextual note of the House of LordsⒺexplanatory note, as to the output of books, and by my estimate we had issued [begin page 339] and published in this country since the Declaration of Independence two hundred and twenty thousandⒶtextual note books. What was the use of protecting those books by copyright? They are all gone. They had all perished before they were tenⒶtextual note years old. There is only about one book in a thousand that can outlive forty-two years of copyright. Therefore why put a limit at all? You might just as well limit a family to twenty-twoⒶtextual note. It will take care of itself. If you try to recall to your minds the number of men in the nineteenth century who wrote books in America which books lived forty-two years you will begin with FenimoreⒶtextual note Cooper, follow that with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Edgar A. Poe, and you will not go far until you begin to find that the list is sharply limited. You come to Whittier and Holmes and Emerson, and you find Howells and Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and then the list gets pretty thin and you question if you can find twentyⒶtextual note persons in the United States in a whole century who have produced books that could outlive or did outlive the forty-two-yearⒶtextual note limit. You can take all the authors in the United States whose books have outlived the forty-two-yearⒶtextual note limit and you can seat them on one of those benches there. Allow three children to each of them, and you certainly can put the result down at a hundredⒶtextual note persons and seat them in three more benches. That is the insignificant number whose bread and butter are to be taken away. For what purpose? For what profit to anybody?

Nobody can tell what that profit is. It is only those books that will outlast the forty-two-year limit that have any value after ten or fifteen years. The rest are all dead. Then you turn those few books into the hands of the pirate—into the hands of the legitimate publisher—and they go onⒶtextual note and get the profit that properly should have gone to wife and children. I do not think that is quite right. I told you what the idea was in this country for a limited copyright.

The English idea of copyright, as I found,Ⓐtextual note was different, when I was before the committee of the House of Lords. The spokesman was a very able man, Lord ThwingⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note, a man of great reputation, but he didn’t know anything about copyright and publishing. Naturally he didn’t, because he hadn’t been brought up to this trade. It is only people who have had intimate personal experience with the triumphs and griefs of an occupation who know how to treat it and get what is justly due.

Now that gentleman had no purpose or desire in the world to rob anybody ofⒶtextual note anything, but this was the proposition—fifty years’ extension—and he asked me what I thought the limit of copyright ought to be.

“Well,” I said, “perpetuity.” I thought it ought to last forever.

Well he didn’t like that idea much. I could see some resentment in his manner, and he went on to say that the idea of a perpetual copyright was illogical, and so forth, and so on. And here was his reason: that it has long ago been decided that ideas are not property, that there can be no such thing as property in ideas.

I said there was property in ideas before Queen Anne’s time; it was recognized that books had perpetual copyright up to her day. Dr.Ⓐtextual note Hale has explained, a moment ago,Ⓐtextual note why they reduced it to fourteen years in Queen Anne’s timeⒺexplanatory note. That is a very charitable explanation of that event. I never heard it before. I thought a lot of publishers had got [begin page 340] together and got it reduced. But I accept Dr.Ⓐtextual note Hale’s more charitable view, for he is older than I am, but not much older, and knows more than I do, but not much more.

That there could be no such thing as property in an intangible idea, was his position. He said, “What is a book? A book is just built from base to roof of ideas, and there can be no property in them.”

I said I wished he could mention any kind of property existing on this planet, that had a pecuniary value, which value was not derived from an idea or ideas—solely.

“Well,” he said, “landed estate—real estate.”

“Why,” I said, “takeⒶtextual note an assumed case, of a dozen Englishmen traveling through South Africa—they camp out; eleven of them see nothing at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party who knows what that near-byⒶtextual note harbor means, what this lay of the land means; to him it means that some day—you cannotⒶtextual note tell when—a railway will come through here, and there on that harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has another idea, and so, perhaps, he trades his last bottle of Scotch whisky and a horse blanket to the principal chief of that region for a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania. There is the value of an idea applied to real estate. That day will come, as it was to come when the Cape-to-Cairo RailwayⒺexplanatory note should pierce Africa and cities should be built; there was some smart person who bought the land from the chief and received his everlasting gratitude, just as was the case with William Penn, who bought for forty dollars’Ⓐtextual note worth of stuff the giant area of PennsylvaniaⒺexplanatory note. He did a righteous thing. We have to be enthusiastic over it, because that was a thing that had never happened before probably. There again was the application of an idea to real estate. Every improvement that is put upon real estate is the result of an idea in somebody’s head. A sky-scraperⒶtextual note is another idea. The railway was another idea. The telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. The wash-tubⒶtextual note was the result of an idea. The thing hadn’t existed before. There is no penny’s-worth of property on this earth that does not derive its pecuniary value from ideas and association of ideas applied and applied and applied again and again and again, as in the case of the steam engine. You have several hundred people contributing their ideas to the improvement and the final perfection of that great thing, whatever it is—telephone, telegraph, and all.”

A book does consist solely of ideas, from the base to the summit, like any other property, and should not be put under the ban of any restriction, but should be the property of the author and his heirs forever and ever, just as a butcher shop is, or—anything, I don’t care what it is. It all has the same basis. The law should recognize the right of perpetuity in this and every other kind of property. Yet for this property I do not ask that at all. Fifty years from now I shall not be here. I am sorry, but I shall not be here. Still, I should like to see the limit extended.

Of course we have to move by slow stages. When an event happens in this world, like that of 1714, under Queen AnneⒺexplanatory note, it is a disaster, yet all the world imagines there was an element of justice in it. They do not know why they imagine it, but it is because somebody else has said so. The slow process of recovery has continued until our day, and will keep constantly progressing. First, fourteen years was added, and then a renewal for fourteen [begin page 341] years; then you encountered Lord Macaulay, who made a speech on copyrightⒺexplanatory note when it was about to achieve a life of sixty years, which kept it at forty-two—a speech that was read and praised all over the world by everybody who did not know that Lord Macaulay did not know what he was talking about. So he inflicted this disaster upon his successors in the authorship of books. The recovery of our lost ground has to undergo regular and slow development—evolution.

Here is this bill, one instance of it. Make the limit the author’s life and fifty years after, and, fifty years from now, Congress will see that that has not convulsed the world; has not destroyed any San Francisco. No earthquakes concealed in it anywhere. It has harmed nobody. It has merely fed some starving author’s children. Mrs. Stowe’s two daughters were close neighbors of mine, and—well, they had their living very much limitedⒺexplanatory note.

That is about all I was to say, I believe. I have some notes—I don’t know in which pocket I put them—and probably I can’t read them when I find them.

There was another thing that came up in that committee meeting.Ⓐtextual note Lord ThwingⒶtextual note asked me on what ground I could bring forth such a monstrosity as that—the idea of a perpetual copyright on literature.

He said, “England does not do that.” That was good argument. If England doesn’t do a thing, that is all right. Why should anybody else? England doesn’t do it. England stands for limited copyright, and will stand for limited copyright, and not give unlimited copyright to anybody’s books.

I said, “You are excepting one book.”

He said, “No; there is no book in England that has perpetual copyright.”

I said, “Yes; there is one book in England that has perpetual copyright, and that is the Bible.”

He said, “There is no such copyright on the Bible in England.”

But I had the documents with me, and I was able to convince him that not only does England confer perpetual copyright upon the Old and New TestamentsⒺexplanatory note, but also on the Revised Scriptures, and also on four or five other theological books, and confers those perpetual copyrights and the profits that may accrue not upon some poor author and his children, but upon the well-to-do Oxford University Press, which can take care of itself without perpetual copyright. There was that one instance of injustice, the discrimination between the author of the present day and the author of thousands of years ago, whose copyright had really expired by the statute of limitations.

I say again, as I said in the beginning, I have no enmities, no animosities toward this bill. This bill is plenty righteous enough for me. I like to see all these industries and arts propagated and encouraged by this bill. This bill will do that, and I do hope that it will pass and have no deleterious effect. I do seem to have an extraordinary interest in a whole lot of arts and things. The bill is full of those that I have nothing to do with. But that is in line with my generous, liberal nature. I can’t help it. I feel toward those same people the same wideⒶtextual note charity felt by the man who arrived at home at twoⒶtextual note o’clock in the morning from the club. He was feeling perfect satisfaction with life—was happy, was comfortable. There was his house weaving and weaving and weaving around. So he [begin page 342] watched his chance, and by and by when the steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbedⒶtextual note up on the portico. The house went on weaving. He watched his door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He got to the stairs, went up on all fours. The house was so unsteady he could hardly reach the top step;Ⓐtextual note hisⒶtextual note toe hitched on that step, and of course he crumpled all down and rolled all the way down the stairs and fetched up at the bottom with hisⒶtextual note arm around the newel-post;Ⓐtextual note and he said, “God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this!Ⓐtextual note”