To Jane Clemens, in Keokuk:
ELMIRA, Aug.7, '86.
DEAR MA,--I heard that Molly and Orion and Pamela had been sick, but Isee by your letter that they are much better now, or nearly well.When we visited you a month ago, it seemed to us that your Keokuk weather was pretty hot; Jean and Clara sat up in bed at Mrs.McElroy's and cried about it, and so did I; but I judge by your letter that it has cooled down, now, so that a person is comparatively comfortable, with his skin off.Well it did need cooling; I remember that I burnt a hole in my shirt, there, with some ice cream that fell on it; and Miss Jenkins told me they never used a stove, but cooked their meals on a marble-topped table in the drawing-room, just with the natural heat.If anybody else had told me, I would not have believed it.I was told by the Bishop of Keokuk that he did not allow crying at funerals, because it scalded the furniture.If Miss Jenkins had told me that, I would have believed it.
This reminds me that you speak of Dr.Jenkins and his family as if they were strangers to me.Indeed they are not.Don't you suppose I remember gratefully how tender the doctor was with Jean when she hurt her arm, and how quickly he got the pain out of the hurt, whereas I supposed it was going to last at least an hour? No, I don't forget some things as easily as I do others.
Yes, it was pretty hot weather.Now here, when a person is going to die, he is always in a sweat about where he is going to; but in Keokuk of course they don't care, because they are fixed for everything.It has set me reflecting, it has taught me a lesson.By and by, when my health fails, I am going to put all my affairs in order, and bid good-bye to my friends here, and kill all the people I don't like, and go out to Keokuk and prepare for death.
They are all well in this family, and we all send love.
Affly Your Son SAM.
The ways of city officials and corporations are often past understanding, and Mark Twain sometimes found it necessary to write picturesque letters of protest.The following to a Hartford lighting company is a fair example of these documents.
To a gas and electric-lighting company, in Hartford:
GENTLEMEN,--There are but two places in our whole street where lights could be of any value, by any accident, and you have measured and appointed your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those places in the centre of a couple of hundred yards of solid darkness.When Inoticed that you were setting one of your lights in such a way that Icould almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected that it was a piece of carelessness on the part of the workmen, and would be corrected as soon as you should go around inspecting and find it out.
My judgment was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned.For fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that Ihad to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it, nights.Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a little more in the dark.
Don't mind us--out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no rights which you are in any way bound to respect.Please take your electric light and go to--but never mind, it is not for me to suggest; you will probably find the way; and any way you can reasonably count on divine assistance if you lose your bearings.
S.L.CLEMENS.
[Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not include in these volumes:
"Gentleman:--Someday you are going to move me almost to the point of irritation with your God-damned chuckle headed fashion of turning off your God-damned gas without giving notice to your God-damned parishioners--and you did it again last night--"D.W.]
Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were written.Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest, sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all.A few such letters here follow.
Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays, tobacco, and what not.They were generally persistent people, unable to accept a polite or kindly denial.Once he set down some remarks on this particular phase of correspondence.He wrote:
INo doubt Mr.Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many an electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal.And no doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of activity whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this sort of solicitation.Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get the loan of somebody else's.
As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case.He sees that his invention or his painting or his book is--apparently--a trifle better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be willing to put your hall-mark on it? You will be giving the purchaser his full money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm? Besides, are you not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to do that?
That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon a thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be.
How ****** that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred who can, be made to see it.