The Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain (best beach reads .TXT) 📖

button was absent, and that shirt followed its comrades out of the window. Then I straightened up, gathered my reserves, and let myself go like a cavalry charge. In the midst of that great assault, my eye fell upon that gaping door, and I was paralyzed.

It took me a good while to finish my toilet. I extended the time unnecessarily in trying to make up my mind as to what I would best do in the circumstances. I tried to hope that Mrs. Clemens was asleep, but I knew better. I could not escape by the window. It was narrow and suited only to shirts. At last I made up my mind to boldly loaf through the bedroom with the air of a person who had not been doing anything. I made half the journey successfully. I did not turn my eyes in her direction, because that would not be safe. It is very difficult to look as if you have not been doing anything when the facts are the other way, and my confidence in my performance oozed steadily out of me as I went along. I was aiming for the left-hand door because it was farthest from my wife. It had never been opened from the day that the house was built, but it seemed a blessed refuge for me now. The bed was this one, wherein I am lying now and dictating these histories morning after morning with so much serenity. It was this same old elaborately carved black Venetian bedstead⁠—the most comfortable bedstead that ever was, with space enough in it for a family, and carved angels enough surmounting its twisted columns and its headboard and footboard to bring peace to the sleepers, and pleasant dreams. I had to stop in the middle of the room. I hadn’t the strength to go on. I believed that I was under accusing eyes⁠—that even the carved angels were inspecting me with an unfriendly gaze. You know how it is when you are convinced that somebody behind you is looking steadily at you. You have to turn your face⁠—you can’t help it. I turned mine. The bed was placed as it is now, with the foot where the head ought to be. If it had been placed as it should have been, the high headboard would have sheltered me. But the footboard was no sufficient protection and I could be seen over it. I was exposed. I was wholly without protection. I turned, because I couldn’t help it⁠—and my memory of what I saw is still vivid, after all these years.

Against the white pillows I saw the black head⁠—I saw that young and beautiful face; and I saw the gracious eyes with a something in them which I had never seen there before. They were snapping and flashing with indignation. I felt myself crumbling; I felt myself shrinking away to nothing under that accusing gaze. I stood silent under that desolating fire for as much as a minute, I should say⁠—it seemed a very, very long time. Then my wife’s lips parted, and from them issued⁠—my latest bathroom remark. The language perfect, but the expression unpractical, apprentice-like, ignorant, inexperienced, comically inadequate, absurdly weak and unsuited to the great language. In my lifetime I had never heard anything so out of tune, so inharmonious, so incongruous, so ill suited to each other as were those mighty words set to that feeble music. I tried to keep from laughing, for I was a guilty person in deep need of charity and mercy. I tried to keep from bursting, and I succeeded⁠—until she gravely said, “There, now you know how it sounds.”

Oh, then I exploded! I said, “Oh, Livy, if it sounds like that, God forgive me, I will never do it again.”

Then she had to laugh, herself. Both of us broke into convulsions, and went on laughing until we were exhausted.

The children were present at breakfast⁠—Clara, aged six, and Susy, eight⁠—and the mother made a guarded remark about strong language; guarded because she did not wish the children to suspect anything⁠—a guarded remark which censured strong language. Both children broke out in one voice with this comment, “Why, mamma, papa uses it!” I was astonished. I had supposed that that secret was safe in my own breast and that its presence had never been suspected. I asked, “How did you know, you little rascals?”

“Oh,” they said, “we often listen over the balusters when you are in the hall explaining things to George.”

From Susy’s Biography

One of papa’s latest books is “The Prince and the Pauper” and it is unquestionably the best book he has ever written, some people want him to keep to his old style, some gentleman wrote him, “I enjoyed Huckleberry Finn immensely and am glad to see that you have returned to your old style.” That enoyed me that enoyed me greatly, because it trobles me [Susy was troubled by that word, and uncertain; she wrote a u above it in the proper place, but reconsidered the matter and struck it out] to have so few people know papa, I mean realy know him, they think of Mark Twain as a humorist joking at everything; “And with a mop of reddish brown hair which sorely needs the barbars brush a roman nose, short stubby mustache, a sad careworn face, with maney crow’s feet,” etc. That is the way people picture papa, I have wanted papa to write a book that would reveal something of his kind sympathetic nature, and “The Prince and the Pauper” partly does it. The book is full of lovely charming ideas, and oh the language! It is perfect. I think that one of the most touching scenes in it, is where the pauper is riding horseback with his nobles in the “recognition procession” and he sees his mother oh and then what followed! How she runs to his side, when she sees him throw up his hand palm outward, and is rudely pushed