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

night had beaten him to death with a club. A couple of months ago I ran across Fuller on the street, and he was looking so very, very old, so withered, so moldy, that I could hardly recognize him. He said his wife was dying of the shock caused by the murder of her brother; that nervous prostration was carrying her off, and she could not live more than a few days⁠—so I went with him to see her.

She was sitting upright on a sofa and was supported all about with pillows. Now and then she leaned her head for a little while on a support. Breathing was difficult for her. It touched me, for I had seen that picture so many, many times. During two or three months Mrs. Clemens sat up like that, night and day, struggling for breath. When she was made drowsy by opiates and exhaustion she rested her head a little while on a support, just as Mrs. Fuller was doing, and got naps of two minutes’ or three minutes’ duration.

I did not see Mrs. Fuller alive again. She passed to her rest about three days later.

Endnotes

Most of Mark Twain’s work up to this time, Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, etc., had been of an autobiographical nature. Also, as early as 1870 he had jotted down an occasional reminiscent chapter, for possible publication, though apparently with no idea of a continuous narrative. Such of these chapters as have survived are included in Vol. I of the present work. —⁠A. B. P. ↩

The Tennessee Land is an important feature in a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age. ↩

These prices of 1877 are as interesting today as those of forty years earlier. ↩

August, 1885. They deny this now, but I go bail I got that statement from Gilder himself. —⁠S. L. C. ↩

In a statement made somewhat later, Mr. Clemens said that he had first heard Gilder mention this fact as they were leaving Chickering Hall. ↩

This had occurred during their first interview. ↩

This is the remark I have already several times referred to. I’ve got Smith’s exact language (from my notebook); it proves that they thought 10-percent royalty would actually represent half profits on General Grant’s book!

Note added Sept. 10, 1885, 250,000 sets⁠—500,000 single copies⁠—have been sold to date⁠—and only half the ground canvassed. ↩

Karl Gerhardt, a young sculptor sent by Mr. and Mrs. Clemens to Paris to perfect himself in his art. ↩

The Grant dictations ended here. General Grant died July 25, 1885. More than 300,000 sets, of two vols. each, of his Memoirs were sold. ↩

This was the Farnam machine⁠—so called. ↩

The machine in the end proved a complete failure, being too complicated, too difficult to keep in order. It cost Mark Twain a total of about $190,000. —⁠A. B. P. ↩

Mr. Clemens evidently intended to precede this paragraph with some data concerning his New England ancestry, but he never did so. —⁠A. B. P. ↩

Correction (1906)⁠—it was above 100,000, it appears. ↩

Raymond was playing Colonel Sellers in 1876 and along there. About twenty years later Mayo dramatized Pudd’nhead Wilson and played the title role delightfully. ↩

The letter was not sent, after all. The temptation was strong, but pity for the victim prevailed. The MS. was, however, recalled and later published in Harper’s Magazine and in book form as St. Joan of Arc. ↩

The reader will realize, even if the author did not, that this had been his plan from the beginning. ↩

May 20, 1906. I recall it now⁠—MacCrellish. —⁠M. T. ↩

With the pen, I mean. This Autobiography is dictated, not written. ↩

Nothing is omitted from the MS. here, whatever may have been the thought in the author’s mind. ↩

It was at this dinner that the idea of the biography which led to these dictations developed. ↩

Col. George Harvey, at the time president of Harper & Brothers, later American Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. ↩

See Life on the Mississippi. ↩

Key was shot by Sickles as a result of a complication which concerned Sickles’s wife. ↩

A Tramp Abroad. ↩

They were largely attracted by the announcement that Mark Twain was to be present and would speak. —⁠A. B. P. ↩

Jan, 11, ’06.⁠—I can’t remember his name. It began with K, I think. He was one of the American revisers of the New Testament, and was nearly as great a scholar as Hammond Trumbull. ↩

Hardly true today. —⁠A. B. P. ↩

August 6, 1870. —⁠S. L. C. ↩

Nye. ↩

I was his publisher, I was putting his Personal Memoirs to press at the time. —⁠S. L. C. ↩

Gaines. ↩

This letter was originally mailed in New York by Brander Matthews and Francis Wilson. ↩

Roughing It is dedicated to Higbie. ↩

Colophon

The Autobiography of Mark Twain
was originally published in 1906⁠–⁠1907 by
Mark Twain.

Threadable
sponsored the production of this ebook for
Standard Ebooks.
It was produced by
Emma Sweeney,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2002 by
Don Lainson and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg Australia (Volume 1 and