第256章

By implication you prove the whole annual pension-scoop, concealing the fact that the bulk of the money goes to people who in no way deserve it.

You imply that all the batteners upon this bribery-fund are Republicans.

An indiscreet confession, since about half of them must have been Democrats before they were bought.

You as good as praise Order 78.It is true you do not shout, and you do not linger, you only whisper and skip--still, what little you do in the matter is complimentary to the crime.

It means, if it means anything, that our outlying properties will all be given up by the Democrats, and our flag hauled down.All of them? Not only the properties stolen by Mr.McKinley and Mr.Roosevelt, but the properties honestly acquired? Joe, did you believe that hardy statement when you made it? Yet you made it, and there it stands in permanent print.Now what moral law would suffer if we should give up the stolen ones? But--"You know our standard-bearer.He will maintain all that we have gained"--by whatever process.Land, I believe you!

By George, Joe, you are as handy at the game as if you had been in training for it all your life.Your campaign Address is built from the ground up upon the oldest and best models.There isn't a paragraph in it whose facts or morals will wash--not even a sentence, I believe.

But you will soon be out of this.You didn't want to do it--that is sufficiently apparent, thanks be!--but you couldn't well get out of it.

In a few days you will be out of it, and then you can fumigate yourself and take up your legitimate work again and resume your clean and wholesome private character once more and be happy--and useful.

I know I ought to hand you some guff, now, as propitiation and apology for these reproaches, but on the whole I believe I won't.

I have inquired, and find that Mitsikuri does not arrive here until to-morrow night.I shall watch out, and telephone again, for I greatly want to see him.

Always Yours, MARK.

P-S- Nov, 4.I wish I could learn to remember that it is unjust and dishonorable to put blame upon the human race for any of its acts.For it did not make itself, it did not make its nature, it is merely a machine, it is moved wholly by outside influences, it has no hand in creating the outside influences nor in choosing which of them it will welcome or reject, its performance is wholly automatic, it has no more mastership nor authority over its mind than it has over its stomach, which receives material from the outside and does as it pleases with it, indifferent to it's proprietor's suggestions, even, let alone his commands; wherefore, whatever the machine does--so called crimes and infamies included--is the personal act of its Maker, and He, solely, is responsible.I wish I could learn to pity the human race instead of censuring it and laughing at it; and I could, if the outside influences of old habit were not so strong upon my machine.It vexes me to catch myself praising the clean private citizen Roosevelt, and blaming the soiled President Roosevelt, when I know that neither praise nor blame is due to him for any thought or word or deed of his, he being merely a helpless and irresponsible coffee-mill ground by the hand of God.

Through a misunderstanding, Clemens, something more than a year earlier, had severed his connection with the Players' Club, of which he had been one of the charter members.Now, upon his return to New York, a number of his friends joined in an invitation to him to return.It was not exactly a letter they sent, but a bit of an old Scotch song--"To Mark Twain from The Clansmen.

Will ye no come back again, Will ye no come back again?

Better lo'ed ye canna be.

Will ye no come back again?"

Those who signed it were David Monroe, of the North American Review;Robert Reid, the painter, and about thirty others of the Round Table Group, so called because its members were accustomed to lunching at a large round table in a bay window of the Player dining-room.Mark Twain's reply was prompt and heartfelt.He wrote:

To Robt.Reid and the Others:

WELL-BELOVED,--Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charley's heart, if he had one, and certainly they have gone to mine.I shall be glad and proud to come back again after such a moving and beautiful compliment as this from comrades whom I have loved so long.I hope you can poll the necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate.It will be many months before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory is the only thing I worship.

It is not necessary for me to thank you--and words could not deliver what I feel, anyway.I will put the contents of your envelope in the small casket where I keep the things which have become sacred to me.

S.L.C.

A year later, Mark Twain did "come back again," as an honorary life member, and was given a dinner of welcome by those who had signed the lines urging his return.