The Life & Times of Mark Twain - 4 Biographical Works in One Edition. Марк Твен
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thought I might possibly have misunderstood. I said:
“Why, you little rascal! Was hast du gesagt?”
But she said the same words over again, and in the same decided way. I suppose I ought to have been outraged; but I wasn’t, I was charmed. And I suppose I ought to have spanked her; but I didn’t, I fraternized with the enemy, and we went on and spent half an hour with the cows.
That incident is followed in the “Record” by the following paragraph, which is another instance of a juvenile characteristic maintaining itself into mature age. Susy was persistently and conscientiously truthful throughout her life with the exception of one interruption covering several months, and perhaps a year. This was while she was still a little child. Suddenly — not gradually — she began to lie; not furtively, but frankly, openly, and on a scale quite disproportioned to her size. Her mother was so stunned, so nearly paralyzed for a day or two, that she did not know what to do with the emergency. Reasonings, persuasions, beseechings, all went for nothing; they produced no effect; the lying went tranquilly on. Other remedies were tried, but they failed. There is a tradition that success was finally accomplished by whipping. I think the Record says so, but if it does it is because the Record is incomplete. Whipping was indeed tried, and was faithfully kept up during two or three weeks, but the results were merely temporary; the reforms achieved were discouragingly brief.
Fortunately for Susy, an incident presently occurred which put a complete stop to all the mother’s efforts in the direction of reform. This incident was the chance discovery in Darwin of a passage which said that when a child exhibits a sudden and unaccountable disposition to forsake the truth and restrict itself to lying, the explanation must be sought away back in the past; that an ancestor of the child had had the same disease, at the same tender age; that it was irremovable by persuasion or punishment, and that it had ceased as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had come, when it had run its appointed course. I think Mr. Darwin said that nothing was necessary but to leave the matter alone and let the malady have its way and perish by the statute of limitations.
We had confidence in Darwin, and after that day Susy was relieved of our reformatory persecutions. She went on lying without let or hindrance during several months, or a year; then the lying suddenly ceased, and she became as conscientiously and exactingly truthful as she had been before the attack, and she remained so to the end of her life.
The paragraph in the Record to which I have been leading up is in my handwriting, and is of a date so long posterior to the time of the lying malady that she had evidently forgotten that truth-speaking had ever had any difficulties for her.
Mama was speaking of a servant who had been pretty unveracious, but was now “trying to tell the truth.” Susy was a good deal surprised, and said she shouldn’t think anybody would have to try to tell the truth.
In the Record the children’s acts and speeches quite definitely define their characters. Susy’s indicated the presence of mentality — thought — and they were generally marked by gravity. She was timid, on her physical side, but had an abundance of moral courage. Clara was sturdy, independent, orderly, practical, persistent, plucky — just a little animal, and very satisfactory. Charles Dudley Warner said Susy was made of mind, and Clara of matter.
When Motley, the kitten, died, some one said that the thoughts of the two children need not be inquired into, they could be divined: that Susy was wondering if this was the end of Motley, and had his life been worth while; whereas Clara was merely interested in seeing to it that there should be a creditable funeral.
In those days Susy was a dreamer, a thinker, a poet and philosopher, and Clara — well, Clara wasn’t. In after-years a passion for music developed the latent spirituality and intellectuality in Clara, and her practicality took second and, in fact, even third place. Jean was from the beginning orderly, steady, diligent, persistent; and remains so. She picked up languages easily, and kept them.
Susy aged eleven, Jean three. — Susy said the other day when she saw Jean bringing a cat to me of her own motion, “Jean has found out already that mamma loves morals and papa loves cats.”
It is another of Susy’s remorselessly sound verdicts.
As a child, Jean neglected my books. When she was nine years old Will Gillette invited her and the rest of us to a dinner at the Murray Hill Hotel in New York, in order that we might get acquainted with Mrs. Leslie and her daughters. Elsie Leslie was nine years old, and was a great celebrity on the stage. Jean was astonished and awed to see that little slip of a thing sit up at table and take part in the conversation of the grown people, capably and with ease and tranquillity. Poor Jean was obliged to keep still, for the subjects discussed never happened to hit her level, but at last the talk fell within her limit and she had her chance to contribute to it. “Tom Sawyer” was mentioned. Jean spoke gratefully up and said,
“I know who wrote that book — Harriet Beecher Stowe!”
One evening Susy had prayed, Clara was curled up for sleep; she was reminded that it was her turn to pray now. She laid “Oh! one’s enough,” and dropped off to slumber.
Clara five years old. — We were in Germany. The nurse, Rosa, was not allowed to speak to the children otherwise than in German. Clara grew very tired of it; by and by the little creature’s patience was exhausted, and she said “Aunt Clara, I wish God had made Rosa in English.”
Clara four years old, Susy six. — This morning when Clara discovered that this is my birthday, she was greatly troubled because she had provided no gift for me, and repeated her sorrow several times. Finally she went musing to the nursery and presently returned with her newest and dearest treasure, a large toy horse, and said, “You shall have this horse for your birthday, papa.”
I accepted it with many thanks. After an hour she was racing up and down the room with the horse, when Susy said,
“Why Clara, you gave that horse to papa, and now you’ve tooken it again.”
Clara. — ”I never give it to him for always; I give it to him for his birthday.”
In Geneva, in September, I lay abed late one morning, and as Clara was passing through the room I took her on my bed a moment. Then the child went to Clara Spaulding and said,
“Aunt Clara, papa is a good deal of trouble to me.”
“Is he? Why?”
“Well, he wants me to get in bed with him, and I can’t do that with jelmuls [gentlemen] — I don’t like jelmuls anyway.”
“What, you don’t like gentlemen! Don’t you like Uncle Theodore Crane?”
“Oh yes, but he’s not a jelmul, he’s a friend.”
Mark Twain.
(To be Continued.)
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXVIII.
JULY 5, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. — XX..
(1868.)
[Notes on “Innocents Abroad.” Dictated in Florence, Italy, April, 1904.] — I will begin with a note upon the dedication. I wrote the book in the months of March and April, 1868, in San Francisco. It was published in August, 1869. Three years afterward Mr. Goodman, of Virginia City, Nevada, on whose newspaper I had served ten years before, came East, and we were walking down Broadway one day when he said: “How did you come to steal Oliver Wendell Holmes’s dedication and put it in your book?”
I made a careless and inconsequential answer, for I supposed he was joking. But he assured me that he was in earnest. He said: “I’m not discussing the question