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

through his intimacy and mine with John Hay. David had a young wife and a young baby. The Grays and the Clemenses visited back and forth frequently, and this was all the solace the Clemenses had in their captivity.

When we could endure imprisonment no longer, Mrs. Clemens sold the house and I sold my one-third interest in the newspaper, and we went to Hartford to live. I have some little business sense now, acquired through hard experience and at great expense; but I had none in those days. I had bought Mr. Kinney’s share of that newspaper (I think the name was Kinney) at his price⁠—which was twenty-five thousand dollars. Later I found that all that I had bought of real value was the Associated Press privilege. I think we did not make a very large use of that privilege. It runs in my mind that about every night the Associated Press would offer us five thousand words at the usual rate, and that we compromised on five hundred. Still, that privilege was worth fifteen thousand dollars, and was easily salable at that price. I sold my whole share in the paper⁠—including that solitary asset⁠—for fifteen thousand dollars. Kinney (if that was his name) was so delighted at his smartness in selling a property to me for twenty-five thousand that was not worth three-fourths of the money, that he was not able to keep his joy to himself, but talked it around pretty freely and made himself very happy over it. I could have explained to him that what he mistook for his smartness was a poor and driveling kind of thing. If there had been a triumph, if there had been a mental exhibition of a majestic sort, it was not his smartness; it was my stupidity; the credit was all due to me. He was a brisk and ambitious and self-appreciative young fellow, and he left straightway for New York and Wall Street, with his head full of sordid and splendid dreams⁠—dreams of the “get rich quick” order; dreams to be realized through the dreamer’s smartness and the other party’s stupidity. Kinney had no place in Wall Street. He quickly lost the money he had gouged out of it.

Tuesday, February 20, 1906

About Rear-Admiral Wilkes⁠—And meeting Mr. Anson Burlingame in Honolulu.

Mrs. Mary Wilkes Dead.

Florence, Italy, Feb. 19.⁠—Mrs. Mary Wilkes, widow of Rear-Admiral Wilkes, U.S.N., is dead, aged eighty-five.

It is death notices like this that enable me to realize in some sort how long I have lived. They drive away the haze from my life’s road and give me glimpses of the beginning of it⁠—glimpses of things which seem incredibly remote.

When I was a boy of ten, in that village on the Mississippi River which at that time was so incalculably far from any place and is now so near to all places, the name of Wilkes, the explorer, was in everybody’s mouth, just as Roosevelt’s is today. What a noise it made, and how wonderful the glory! How far away and how silent it is now! And the glory has faded to tradition. Wilkes had discovered a new world and was another Columbus. That world afterward turned mainly to ice and snow. But it was not all ice and snow⁠—and in our late day we are rediscovering it, and the world’s interest in it has revived. Wilkes was a marvel in another way, for he had gone wandering about the globe in his ships and had looked with his own eyes upon its furthest corners, its dreamlands⁠—names and places which existed rather as shadows and rumors than as realities. But everybody visits those places now, in outings and summer excursions, and no fame is to be gotten out of it.

One of the last visits I made in Florence⁠—this was two years ago⁠—was to Mrs. Wilkes. She had sent and asked me to come, and it seemed a chapter out of the romantic and the impossible that I should be looking upon the gentle face of the sharer in that long-forgotten glory. We talked of the common things of the day, but my mind was not present. It was wandering among the snowstorms and the ice floes and the fogs and mysteries of the antarctic with this patriarchal lady’s young husband. Nothing remarkable was said; nothing remarkable happened. Yet a visit has seldom impressed me so much as did this one.

Here is a pleasant and welcome letter, which plunges me back into the antiquities again:

Knollwood,
Westfield, New Jersey.
February 17, 1906.

My Dear Mr. Clemens:

I should like to tell you how much I thank you for an article which you wrote once, long ago, (1870 or ’71) about my grandfather, Anson Burlingame.

In looking over the interesting family papers and letters, which have come into my possession this winter, nothing has impressed me more deeply than your tribute. I have read it again and again. I found it pasted into a scrapbook and apparently it was cut from a newspaper. It is signed with your name.

It seems to bring before one more clearly, than anything I have been told or read, my grandfather’s personality and achievements.⁠ ⁠…

Family traditions grow less and less in the telling. Young children are so impatient of anecdotes, and when they grow old enough to understand their value, frequent repetitions, as well as newer interests and associations, seem to have dulled, not the memory, but the spontaneity and joy of telling about the old days⁠—so unless there is something written and preserved, how much is lost to children of the good deeds of their fathers.

Perhaps it will give you a little pleasure to know that after all these years, the words you wrote about “a good man, and a very, very great man” have fallen into the heart of one to whom his fame is very near and precious. You say “Mr. Burlingame’s short history⁠—for he was only forty-seven⁠—reads like a fairytale. Its successes, its surprises, its happy situations occur all along, and each new episode is always an improvement