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

yet sinking deeper and deeper toward despair, with the conviction that this time he was not going to arrive. He would seem to get so far away from any possible goal that you would feel convinced that he could not cover the intervening space and get there before his ten minutes would come to an end and leave him suspended between heaven and earth. But, sure as a gun, before that ten minutes ended Will Hammersley would arrive at his point and fetch it out with such a round and complete and handsome and satisfying unostentatious crash that you would be lifted out of your chair with admiration and gratitude.

Joe Twichell sometimes took his turn. If he talked, it was easily perceptible that it was because he had something to say, and he was always able to say it well. But almost as a rule, he said nothing, and gave his ten minutes to the next man. And whenever he gave it to ⸻, he ran the risk of getting lynched on his way home by the rest of the membership. ⸻ was the dullest white man in Connecticut⁠—and he probably remains that to this day: I have not heard of any real competitor. ⸻ would moon along, and moon along, and moon along, using the most commonplace, the most dreary, the most degraded English, with never an idea in it by any chance. But he never gave his ten minutes to anybody. He always used it up to the last second. Then there was always a little gap⁠—had to be for the crowd to recover before the next man could begin. ⸻, when he would get entirely lost in his talk and didn’t know where he was in his idiotic philosophizings, would grasp at narrative, as the drowning man grasps at a straw. If a drowning man ever does that⁠—which I doubt. Then he would tell something in his experiences, thinking perhaps it had something to do with the question in hand. It generally hadn’t⁠—and this time he told about a long and arduous and fatiguing chase which he had had in the Maine woods on a hot summer’s day, after some kind of a wild animal that he wanted to kill, and how at last, chasing eagerly after this creature across a wide stream, he slipped and fell on the ice, and injured his leg⁠—whereupon a silence and confusion. ⸻ noticed that something was wrong, and then it occurred to him that there was a kind of discrepancy in hunting animals on the ice in summertime, so he switched off to theology. He always did that. He was a rabid Christian, and member of Joe Twichell’s church. Joe Twichell could get together the most impossible Christians that ever assembled in anybody’s congregation; and as a usual thing he couldn’t run his church systematically on account of new deacons who didn’t understand the business⁠—the recent deacons having joined their predecessors in the penitentiary down there at Wethersfield. ⸻ would wind up with some very pious remarks⁠—and in fact they all did that. Take the whole crowd⁠—the crowd that was almost always present⁠—and this remark applies to them. There was J. Hammond Trumbull, the most learned man in the United States. He knew everything⁠—everything in detail that had ever happened in this world, and a lot that was going to happen, and a lot that couldn’t ever possibly happen. He would close with some piety. Henry C. Robinson⁠—Governor Henry C. Robinson⁠—a brilliant man, a most polished and effective and eloquent speaker, an easy speaker, a speaker who had no difficulties to encounter in delivering himself⁠—always closed with some piety. A. C. Dunham, a man really great in his line⁠—that is to say the commercial line⁠—a great manufacturer, an enterprising man, a capitalist, a most competent and fascinating talker, a man who never opened his mouth without a stream of practical pearls flowing from it⁠—he always closed with some piety.

New York, January 13, 1906

The piety ending was used also by Franklin and Johnson, and possibly by the rest of the club⁠—most likely by the rest of the club. But I recall that that ending was a custom with Franklin and with Johnson. Franklin was a bluff old soldier. He was a West Pointer and, I think, had served in the Mexican War. He commanded one of McClellan’s armies in the Civil War at the time that McClellan was commander-in-chief. He was an ideal soldier, simple-hearted, good, kind, affectionate; set in his opinions, his partialities and his prejudices, believing everything which he had been taught to believe about politics, religion, and military matters; thoroughly well educated in the military science⁠—in fact, I have already said that, because I have said he was a West Pointer. He knew all that was worth knowing in that specialty and was able to reason well upon his knowledge, but his reasoning faculty did not shine when he was discussing other things. Johnson was a member of Trinity, and was easily the most brilliant member of the club. But his fine light shone not in public, but in the privacy of the club, and his qualities were not known outside of Hartford.

I had long been suffering from these intolerable and inexcusable exudations of misplaced piety, and for years had wanted to enter a protest against them, but had struggled against the impulse and had always been able to conquer it, until now. But this time ⸻ was too much for me. He was the feather that broke the camel’s back. The substance of his wandering twaddle⁠—if by chance it had substance⁠—was that there is nothing in dreams. Dreams merely proceed from indigestion⁠—there is no quality of intelligence in them⁠—they are thoroughly fantastic and without beginning, logical sequence, or definite end. Nobody, in our day, but the stupid or the ignorant attaches any significance to them. And then he went on blandly and pleasantly to say that dreams had once had a mighty importance, that