The present text is based upon a manuscript, DV234, probably the only phase under Mark Twain's control. Two typescripts prepared in his lifetime are extant, yet neither shows correction or revision other than Paine's. On one of them Paine wrote “dictated in 1908,” but it is merely a copy of the manuscript. The manuscript paper is a light double-ruled stationery of European manufacture which Mark Twain occasionally used in 1897–1898.
The present title is in Paine's hand in the typescript “dictated in 1908.” It is preferred over “Repentance,” which heads the manuscript in a hand other than Mark Twain's, because Paine may have been instructed to add it and because “Repentance” seems to be only a designation of subject. Mark Twain changed “minds.” to “minds; but” (90.10), leaving “When” in upper case; the word is now in lower case.
Previous printing: LE, pp. 167–168.
[1898]
It is curious—the mis-association of certain words. For instance, the word Repentance. Through want of reflection, we associate it exclusively with Sin. We get the notion early, and keep it always, that we repent of bad deeds only; whereas we do a formidably large business in repenting of good deeds which we have done. Often when we repent of a sin, we do it perfunctorily, from principle, coldly and from the head; but when we repent of a good deed the repentance comes hot and bitter, and straight from the heart. Often, when we repent of a sin, we can forgive ourselves and drop the matter out of our minds; but when we repent of a good deed we seldom get peace—we go on repenting, to the end. And the repentance is so perennially young and strong and vivid and vigorous! A great benefaction, conferred with your whole heart upon an ungrateful man—with what immortal persistence and never-cooling energy do you repent of that! Repentance of a sin is a pale poor perishable thing compared to it. I am quite sure that the average man is built just as I am; otherwise I should not be making this revelation of my inside. I say the average man, and stop there; for I am quite certain that there are people who do not repent of their good deeds when the return they get for them is treachery and ingratitude. I think that these few ought to be in heaven; they are in the way here. In my time I have committed several millions of sins. Many of them I probably repented of—I do not remember, [begin page 91] now; others I was partly minded to repent of, but it did not seem worth while; all of them but the recent ones and a few scattering former ones I have forgotten. In my time I have done eleven good deeds. I remember all of them; four of them with crystal clearness. These four I repent of whenever I think of them—and that is not seldomer than fifty-two times a year. I repent of them in the same old original furious way, undiminished, always. If I wake up, away in the night, they are there, waiting and ready; and they keep me company till the morning. I have not committed any sin that has lasted me like this, save one; and I have not repented of any sin with the unmodifying earnestness and sincerity with which I have repented of these four gracious and beautiful good deeds.
Possibly you who are reading these paragraphs are of those few who have got mislaid and ought to be in heaven. In that case you will not understand what I have been saying, and will have no sympathy with it; but your neighbor will, if he is fifty years old.