The Life & Times of Mark Twain - 4 Biographical Works in One Edition. Марк Твен
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ways, and kept it until his death. I have played that game a number of times since, but that first time was the only time in my life that I have ever pocketed all the fifteen in a single inning.
(1876.)
My unsuspicious nature has made it necessary for Providence to save me from traps a number of times. Thirty years ago, a couple of Elmira bankers invited me to play the game of “Quaker” with them. I had never heard of the game before, and said that if it required intellect, I should not be able to entertain them. But they said it was merely a game of chance, and required no mentality — so I agreed to make a trial of it. They appointed four in the afternoon for the sacrifice. As the place, they chose a ground-floor room with a large window in it. Then they went treacherously around and advertised the “sell” which they were going to play upon me.
I arrived on time, and we began the game — with a large and eager free-list to superintend it. These superintendents were outside, with their noses pressed against the windowpane. The bankers described the game to me. So far as I recollect, the pattern of it was this: they had a pile of Mexican dollars on the table; twelve of them were of even date, fifty of them were of odd dates. The bankers were to separate a coin from the pile and hide it under a hand, and I must guess “odd” or “even.” If I guessed correctly, the coin would be mine; if incorrectly, I lost a dollar. The first guess I made was “even,” and was right. I guessed again, “even,” and took the money. They fed me another one and I guessed “even” again, and took the money. I guessed “even” the fourth time, and took the money. It seemed to me that “even” was a good guess, and I might as well stay by it, which I did. I guessed “even” twelve times, and took the twelve dollars. I was doing as they secretly desired. Their experience of human nature had convinced them that any human being as innocent as my face proclaimed me to be, would repeat his first guess if it won, and would go on repeating it if it should continue to win. It was their belief that an innocent would be almost sure at the beginning to guess “even,” and not “odd,” and that if an innocent should guess “even” twelve times in succession and win every time, he would go on guessing “even” to the end — so it was their purpose to let me win those twelve even dates and then advance the odd dates, one by one, until I should lose fifty dollars, and furnish those superintendents something to laugh about for a week to come.
But it did not come out in that way; for by the time I had won the twelfth dollar and last even date, I withdrew from the game because it was so one-sided that it was monotonous, and did not entertain me. There was a burst of laughter from the superintendents at the window when I came out of the place, but I did not know what they were laughing at nor whom they were laughing at, and it was a matter of no interest to me anyway. Through that incident I acquired an enviable reputation for smartness and penetration, but it was not my due, for I had not penetrated anything that the cow could not have penetrated.
Mark Twain.
(To be Continued.)
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXX.
AUGUST 2, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. — XXI..
From Susy’s Biography of Me.
Feb. 12, ‘86.
Mamma and I have both been very much troubled of late because papa since he has been publishing Gen. Grant’s book has seemed to forget his own books and work entirely, and the other evening as papa and I were promonading up and down the library he told me that he didn’t expect to write but one more book, and then he was ready to give up work altogether, die, or do anything, he said that he had written more than he had ever expected to, and the only book that he had been pertickularly anxious to write was one locked up in the safe down stairs, not yet published.
But this intended future of course will never do, and although papa usually holds to his own opinions and intents with outsiders, when mamma realy desires anything and says that it must be, papa allways gives up his plans (at least so far) and does as she says is right (and she is usually right, if she dissagrees with him at all). It was because he knew his great tendency to being convinced by her, that he published without her knowledge that article in the “Christian Union” concerning the government of children. So judging by the proofs of past years, I think that we will be able to persuade papa to go back to work as before, and not leave off writing with the end of his next story. Mamma says that she sometimes feels, and I do too, that she would rather have papa depend on his writing for a living than to have him think of giving it up.
[Dictated, November 8, 1906.] I have a defect of a sort which I think is not common; certainly I hope it isn’t: it is rare that I can call before my mind’s eye the form and face of either friend or enemy. If I should make a list, now, of persons whom I know in America and abroad — say to the number of even an entire thousand — it is quite unlikely that I could reproduce five of them in my mind’s eye. Of my dearest and most intimate friends, I could name eight whom I have seen and talked with four days ago, but when I try to call them before me they are formless shadows. Jean has been absent, this past eight or ten days, in the country, and I wish I could reproduce her in the mirror of my mind, but I can’t do it.
It may be that this defect is not constitutional, but a result of lifelong absence of mind and indolent and inadequate observation. Once or twice in my life it has been an embarrassment to me. Twenty years ago, in the days of Susy’s Biography of Me, there was a dispute one morning at the breakfast-table about the color of a neighbor’s eyes. I was asked for a verdict, but had to confess that if that valued neighbor and old friend had eyes I was not sure that I had ever seen them. It was then mockingly suggested that perhaps I didn’t even know the color of the eyes of my own family, and I was required to shut my own at once and testify. I was able to name the color of Mrs. Clemens’s eyes, but was not able to even suggest a color for Jean’s, or Clara’s, or Susy’s.
All this talk is suggested by Susy’s remark: “The other evening as papa and I were promenading up and down the library.” Down to the bottom of my heart I am thankful that I can see that picture! And it is not dim, but stands out clear in the unfaded light of twenty-one years ago. In those days Susy and I used to “promonade” daily up and down the library, with our arms about each other’s waists, and deal in intimate communion concerning affairs of State, or the deep questions of human life, or our small personal affairs.
It was quite natural that I should think I had written myself out when I was only fifty years old, for everybody who has ever written has been smitten with that superstition at about that age. Not even yet have I really written myself out. I have merely stopped writing because dictating is pleasanter work, and because dictating has given me a strong aversion to the pen, and because two hours of talking per day is enough, and because — But I am only damaging my mind with this digging around in it for pretexts where no pretext is needed, and where the simple truth is for this one time better than any invention, in this small emergency. I shall never finish my five or six unfinished books, for the reason that by forty years of slavery to the pen I have earned my freedom. I detest the pen and I wouldn’t use it again to sign the death warrant of my dearest enemy.
[Dictated, March 8, 1906.] For thirty years, I have received an average of a dozen letters a year from strangers who remember me, or whose fathers remember me as boy and young man. But these letters are almost always disappointing. I have not known these strangers nor their fathers. I have not heard of the names they mention; the reminiscences to which they call attention have had no part in my experience; all of which means that these strangers have been mistaking me for somebody else. But at last I have the refreshment, this morning, of a letter from a man who deals in names that were familiar to me in my boyhood. The writer encloses a newspaper clipping which has been wandering through the press for four or five weeks, and he wants