It always distresses me when I do something sly and furtive which seems to me to be particularly and admirably smart to find that it has missed fire so to speak. These smartnesses of mine fail so often that I have finally been forced to the conclusion that the smartness is all on my side, and fails of recognition because smartness, and smartness alone, is able to perceive smartness. Sometimes when depressed by these failures, I have even wished that I was not so smart then I would not suffer so much and so often.
A short time ago, when I was trying to think up some way to save our little community of farmers the expense of building a house for our little libraryⒺexplanatory note by putting that expense upon distant strangers in no way interested in that library, I hit upon a plan which I thought was very smart and would accomplish the end in view. On its face this plan was quite conspicuously innocent; it revealed no conspiracy against the distant stranger at all but seemed to interest itself in only the casual visitor to my house. Upon him it levied a tax of one dollar, to be applied to the building fund. It did not seem to interest itself in the distant stranger at all, yet the distant stranger was just the person it was after; for the reason that the distant stranger is very numerous, and his dollar equally numerous, whereas the visitor under my roof is necessarily not numerous and his dollar not swiftly cumulative. My guests average about twenty a month, and as half of these are women and I was proposing to tax only the men, it would take a painfully long time to gather together money enough by the tax to build even the most inexpensive library house.
In pursuance of my deep plan, I wrote out the communication for delivery to my guests explaining the purpose of the tax and justifying it; I had this communication nicely printed upon vellum paper and placed carelessly and casually so conspicuously in each room that no guest could overlookⒶtextual note it—then I waited for results. The results were satisfactory as far as the guests were concerned; they promptly paid the tax and sometimes paid it twenty and thirty-fold, but there my scheme halted, there it failed, there it disappointed me. I was after the distant stranger, and I couldn’t seem to get hold of him. The kernelⒶtextual note of my deep scheme was shut up in a single sentence, but apparently I had shut it up so securely that nobody was ever going to discover it. That sentence, upon which I set such great store, and from whose ministrations I expected such wide pecuniary results was this:
“I desire that the money be paid to me personally.”
[begin page 285] Do you see? To pay the money to me personally would make an autographed receipt from me necessary. Now right there lies the admirable smartness of the whole great scheme. I had hoped and believed and expected that the distant stranger would hear of these autographed receipts and would be smitten with what would seem to him to be a bright and cunning and novel idea: the happy idea of sending a dollar and calling for an autographed receipt, without adding the formality of travelingⒶtextual note to Stormfield to pay a personal visit. Here is a copy of that communication which I exposed in the guest-rooms.
Greeting and Salutation and Prosperity!
And Therewith, Length of Days. Listen:
MY fellow farmers of this vicinity have gathered together some hundreds of books and instituted a public library and given it my name. Large contributions of books have been sent to it by Robert CollierⒺexplanatory note, of Collier’s Weekly, by Colonel Harvey, of Harper & Brothers, and by Doubleday, Page & Company—all these without coercion; indeed upon the merest hint. The other great publishers will do the like as soon as they hear about this enterprise. The Harper Periodicals, Collier’s Weekly, World’s Work, Country Life in America, and other magazines are sent gratis to the library—this also without coercion, merely upon hint. The hint will in due time be extended to the other magazines. And so, we have a library. Also, my fellow farmers have arranged for the librarian’s salary and the other running expenses, and will furnish the necessary money themselves. There is yet one detail lacking: a building for the library. Mr. Theodore AdamsⒺexplanatory note gives the ground for it. Mr. SunderlandⒺexplanatory note furnishes, gratis, the plans and specifications, and will let the contracts and superintend the erection of the house. The library building will cost about two thousand dollars. Everybody will have a chance to contribute to this fund. Everybody, including my guests—I mean guests from a distance. It seems best to use coercion in this case. Therefore I have levied a tax—a Guests’ Mark Twain Library Building Tax, of one dollar, not upon the valuable sex, but only upon the other one. Guests of the valuable sex are tax-free, and shall so remain; but guests of the other sex must pay, whether they are willing or not. I desire that the money be paid to me, personally: this is the safest way. If it were paid to my secretary a record would have to be made of it, and the record could get lost.
The peace of the house be upon thee and abide with thee!
“Stormfield,” Redding, Conn., October 7, 1908.
Every day or two a guest paid his fine and carried away his autographed receipt. By now, about fifty of these receipts have gone out, I expecting all the time that the distant stranger would come across one of these baits and bite, but I was disappointed; it never happened until this morning. This morning I have a bite from Canada and a dollar [begin page 286] along with it and my spirit is relieved and at peace at last; the scheme is going to win; it was deep, it was smart, it is going to succeed; we have captured the first stranger, we will get the others, it is as I foresaw when the spirit of prophecy was upon me: the distant stranger is going to build our library house for us. Here follows the letter from Canada which has brought me all this peace.
Toronto Ⓔexplanatory note Ⓐtextual note, December 7, 1908
Mr.Ⓐtextual note Samuel M. Clemens,
“Stormfield,”
Redding, Conn.
Dear Sir:—
The last time I had the pleasure of hearing you was at the Princess Hotel, in Hamilton, Bermuda, last March, when you were speaking in aid of the Sailors’ HospitalⒺexplanatory note.
In the Toronto Saturday NightⒺexplanatory note of December 5th I again find you assisting to build a library, and I herewith enclose cheque for $1.15, the 15¢ is for exchange, the dollar for the library building, but I must confess that I am sending you the cheque with the hope that when it comes back, it may have your valued autograph on the back. Do not stab my hopes by using a rubber stamp or letting somebody else sign it with a power of attorney, but let me have your real, genuine signature.
Hoping this letter may find you in a good humor, though I suppose I should “say you are always in a good humor,” but I have read your autobiographyⒺexplanatory note and know that this would be base flattery.
Yours faithfully,Ⓐtextual note
There are many interesting letters in this morning’s mail. Among others there is one from a German schoolboy which I wish to copy here because of the engaging quaintness of its English. There is an elusive and darling and delightful something about a foreigner’s use of a book-acquired language which is nearly always pleasant and fragrant and felicitous. This German boy’s letter is certainly English, and as certainly not English, but its quaint handling of our language has a pungent charm, a charm that is all its own.
I am engaged with my school-fellows in reading your “A Tramp abroad” in my English lessons. I am very satisfied with it and have had till now much pleasure with all my fellow-pupils and our teacher, Mr. Yemusens. We have sometimes very much laughed at the humour, which is contained it. In our last lesson we have found a passage, which is not quite clear to us, which we are not quite understanding. In chapter III. near the middle of “Baker’s blue-jay yarn”Ⓔexplanatory note you make say the blue-jay at its examination of the hole on the log-house’s roof: I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes. I beg to ask of you what you mean by these lines. Will you therefore kindly inform me, what you will express by this passage? Moreover your blue-jay has queer thoughts just so Jim Baker himself, whose style I find sometimes very comical.
I hope, you will spend a post-card for answer, for, of course, I cannot compensate you the postage by German post-stamps. Should you have pains to understand [begin page 287] these lines, I beg to excuse me, as I am engaged in the English language only for two years and a half.
I have the honour to remain, Sir,
Your truly obliged,
Kurt Mönch
Realschüler
To Mr. Clemens.
Auerbach i. Vgtld., unterer Bahnhof
(Germany)
I have explained to himⒺexplanatory note that when I was a boy in the wilds of Missouri, we supposed that the birds in museums were stuffed with sawdust; if any other material was used by the taxidermist, we were not aware of it.
the expense of building a house for our little library] A few months after moving to Redding in June 1908, Clemens, along with some of his neighbors, founded the Mark Twain Library Association. The Mark Twain Library opened, in a former chapel, on 28 October 1908. Clemens then raised money for a new building with stratagems such as the one he describes in this dictation. After the sudden death of Jean Clemens on 24 December 1909 (see “Closing Words of My Autobiography”), her house and property on the Stormfield grounds were sold and, a few days before his own death in April 1910, Clemens gave the $6,000 in proceeds to construct what became the Jean L. Clemens Memorial Building, which was formally dedicated in February 1911. The core of the library’s collection consisted of about three thousand of Clemens’s own books, several hundred donated by Clemens himself and the rest donated by Clara after his death (Mark Twain Library 2014a–b; Gribben 1980, 1:xxvii–xxviii; “Twain Books for Library,” New York Times, 10 July 1910, 1; see also “The Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” note at 345.37).
Robert Collier] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 19 February 1908, note at 210.31.
Theodore Adams] In a speech delivered at the opening of the library, Clemens had suggested that Theodore Adams provide the land for a new building. Adams, whose great-grandfather had settled in Redding around 1760, had recently returned to the area after working for thirty-five years with a carriage manufacturer in Springfield, Massachusetts (Todd 1906, 222–23). Although Clemens’s remark took him by surprise, Adams promptly offered to donate a “most desirable site” ( MTB , 3:1471–73; Fatout 1976, 630–31). On 19 December 1908 Lyon noted in her journal, “It made me ill in my soul to see the men pacing off double the quantity of land needed, & to see Mr. Adams’s expression of distress when he saw them devouring the land with mighty strides” (Lyon 1908).
Mr. Sunderland] Philip N. Sunderland worked for his father’s contracting firm, which built Stormfield.
Toronto] Clemens revised the original of this letter before it was transcribed into the autobiography, canceling the letterhead (“Virtue and Company, Publishers and Importers of Fine Editions of Special and Standard Works,” a Toronto firm) and the writer’s signature, “J B Sutherland.”
last March, when you were speaking in aid of the Sailors’ Hospital] Clemens spoke at a benefit for the Cottage Hospital (not the Sailors’ Hospital) in Bermuda on 5 March 1908 (see AD, 16 Apr 1908, and the note at 212.5–6).
the Toronto Saturday Night] Toronto Saturday Night was a weekly magazine devoted to public affairs and the arts. Established in 1887, it appeared in a variety of formats until 2005. The issue of 5 December 1908, which evidently printed Clemens’s “To My Guests” circular, was not available for examination.
I have read your autobiography] That is, the twenty-five “Chapters from My Autobiography” published in the North American Review between September 1906 and December 1907, or reprints of them.
“Baker’s blue-jay yarn”] In chapters 2 and 3 of A Tramp Abroad.
I have explained to him] Clemens’s reply to Mönch is not known to survive.
Source documents.
SLC notice Printed one-page notice: ‘To My Guests . . . October 7, 1908.’ (285.8–35).Sutherland to SLC Typed letter, J. B. Sutherland to SLC, 7 December 1908: ‘Toronto . . . Yours faithfully,’ (286.6–23).
TS Typescript, seven unnumbered leaves, made from Howden’s notes, SLC’s notice, and Sutherland to SLC.
TS is the only authoritative source for the dictated portion of this text. (Several inked corrections of typing errors on it are Clemens’s.) A manuscript and typescript of Clemens’s notice “To My Guests” survive in the Mark Twain Papers, but they omit the names of the magazines at 285.17–18. We therefore follow the printed version, which clearly incorporates Clemens’s revisions on the now-lost document that served as copy for Howden. On Sutherland’s letter, Clemens deleted most of the stationery’s pre-printed matter, and Sutherland’s signature. The insignificant pre-printed material and the trivial variants that Howden introduced in the texts of both documents have not been reported. The letter of unknown date from Kurt Mönch—‘I am engaged . . . (Germany)’ (286.31–287.9)—survives only in Howden’s transcription.