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

other Presidents since, but Mason’s record has protected him, and the many and powerful efforts to dislodge him have all failed. Also, he has been complimented with promotions. He was promoted from consul-general in Frankfort to consul-general at Berlin, our highest consular post in Germany. A year ago he was promoted another step⁠—to the consul-generalship in Paris, and he holds that place yet.

Ruth, the child, remained not long on earth to help make it beautiful and to bless the home of her parents. But, little creature as she was, she did high service for her country, as I have shown, and it is right that this should be recorded and remembered.

In accordance with the suggestion made in Gilder’s letter (as copied in yesterday’s talk) I have written the following note to ex-President Cleveland:

Honored Sir:⁠—

Your patriotic virtues have won for you the homage of half the nation and the enmity of the other half. This places your character as a citizen upon a summit as high as Washington’s. The verdict is unanimous and unassailable. The votes of both sides are necessary in cases like these, and the votes of the one side are quite as valuable as are the votes of the other. Where the votes are all in a man’s favor the verdict is against him. It is sand, and history will wash it away. But the verdict for you is rock, and will stand.

S. L. Clemens.

As of date March 18, 1906.

When Mr. Cleveland was a member of a very strong and prosperous firm of lawyers, in Buffalo, just before the ’seventies, he was elected to the mayoralty. Presently a formidably rich and powerful railway corporation worked an ordinance through the city government whose purpose was to take possession of a certain section of the city inhabited altogether by the poor, the helpless, and the inconsequential, and drive those people out. Mr. Cleveland vetoed the ordinance. The other members of his law firm were indignant and also terrified. To them the thing which he had done meant disaster to their business. They waited upon him and begged him to reconsider his action. He declined to do it. They insisted. He still declined. He said that his official position imposed upon him a duty which he could not honorably avoid; therefore he should be loyal to it; that the helpless situation of these inconsequential citizens made it his duty to stand by them and be their friend, since they had no other; that he was sorry if this conduct of his must bring disaster upon the firm, but that he had no choice; his duty was plain, and he would stick to the position which he had taken. They intimated that this would lose him his place in the firm. He said he did not wish to be a damage to the copartnership, therefore they could remove his name from it, and without any hard feeling on his part.

During the time that we were living in Buffalo in ’70 and ’71, Mr. Cleveland was sheriff, but I never happened to make his acquaintance, or even see him. In fact, I suppose I was not even aware of his existence. Fourteen years later, he was become the greatest man in the state. I was not living in the state at the time. He was Governor, and was about to step into the post of President of the United States. At that time I was on the public highway in company with another bandit, George W. Cable. We were robbing the public with readings from our works during four months⁠—and in the course of time we went to Albany to levy tribute, and I said, “We ought to go and pay our respects to the Governor.”

So Cable and I went to that majestic Capitol building and stated our errand. We were shown into the Governor’s private office, and I saw Mr. Cleveland for the first time. We three stood chatting together. I was born lazy, and I comforted myself by turning the corner of a table into a sort of seat. Presently the Governor said: “Mr. Clemens, I was a fellow citizen of yours in Buffalo a good many months, a good while ago, and during those months you burst suddenly into a mighty fame, out of a previous long-continued and no doubt proper obscurity⁠—but I was a nobody, and you wouldn’t notice me nor have anything to do with me. But now that I have become somebody, you have changed your style, and you come here to shake hands with me and be sociable. How do you explain this kind of conduct?”

“Oh,” I said, “it is very simple. Your Excellency. In Buffalo you were nothing but a sheriff. I was in society. I couldn’t afford to associate with sheriffs. But you are a Governor, now, and you are on your way to the Presidency. It is a great difference, and it makes you worth while.”

There appeared to be about sixteen doors to that spacious room. From each door a young man now emerged, and the sixteen lined up and moved forward and stood in front of the Governor with an aspect of respectful expectancy in their attitude. No one spoke for a moment. Then the Governor said: “You are dismissed, gentlemen. Your services are not required. Mr. Clemens is sitting on the bells.”

There was a cluster of sixteen bell-buttons on the corner of the table against which I had been lounging,

Wednesday, March 7, 1906

Susy’s biography⁠—Susy and her father escort Mrs. Clemens to train, then go over Brooklyn Bridge⁠—On the way to Vassar they discuss German profanity⁠—Mr. Clemens tells of the sweet and profane German nurse⁠—The arrival at Vassar and the dreary reception⁠—told by Susy⁠—the reading, etc. Mr. Clemens’s opinion of girls⁠—He is to talk to the Barnard girls this afternoon.

From Susy’s Biography

The next day mamma planned to take the four-o’clock car back to Hartford. We rose quite early that morning and went to the Vienna Bakery and took breakfast there.