Autobiography of Mark Twain (54 page)

“Yes-yes, that is all right, never mind about that; come down to business—what is it you want?”

No matter how big or how little your place in life may be, you have a grindstone, and people will bring axes to you. None escapes.

Also, you are in the business yourself. You privately rage at the man who brings his axe to you, but every now and then you carry yours to somebody and ask a whet. I don’t carry mine to strangers, I draw the line there; perhaps that is your way. This is bound to set us up on a high and holy pinnacle and make us look down in cold rebuke upon persons who carry their axes to strangers.

Now, then, since we all carry axes, and must, and cannot break ourselves of it, why has not a best way to do it been invented by some wise and thoughtful person? There can be no reason but one: from the beginning of time each member of the human race, while recognizing with shame and angry disapproval that everybody else is an axe-bearer and beggar, has all the while deceived himself with the superstition that he is free of the taint. And so it would never occur to him to plan out for the help and benefit of the race a scheme which could not advantage himself. For that is human nature.

But—let us recognize it and confess it—we
are
all concerned to plan out a best way to approach a person’s grindstone, for we are all beggars; a best way, a way which shall as nearly as possible avoid offensiveness, a way which shall best promise to secure a grinding for the axe. How would this plan answer, for instance:

Never convey the axe yourself;
send it by another stranger; or by your friend; or by the grindstone-man’s friend; or by a person who is friend to both of you.

Of course this last is best-best, but the others are good. You see, when you dispatch the axe yourself, (along with your new book, for instance,) you are making one thing absolutely certain: the grindstone-man will be all ready with a prejudice against it and an aversion, before he has even looked at it. Because—why, merely because you have tied his hands, you have not left him independent, he feels himself cornered, and he frets at this, he chafes, he resents as an impertinence your taking this unfair advantage of him—and he is right. He knows you meant to take a mean advantage of him—with all your clumsy arts you have not deceived him. He knows you framed your letter with deliberation, to a distinct end: to compel an answer. You have paid him homage: by all the laws of courtesy, he has got to pay for it. And he cannot choose the way: he has to pay for it in thanks and return-compliments. Your ingenuities resemble those of the European professional beggar: to head you off from pretending you did not receive his letter, he
registers
it—and he’s
got
you!

I respect my own forms of passing the hat, but not other people’s. I realize that this is natural. Among my forms is not that of sending my books to strangers. To do that is to beg for a puff—it has that object, whether the object is confessed in words or not. Since that is not my form of soliciting alms, I look down upon it with a polar disdain. It seems to me that this also is natural. The first time a stranger ever sent me his book, I was as pleased as a child, and I took all the compliments at par; I supposed the letter was written just to get in those compliments. I didn’t read between the lines, I didn’t know there was anything between the lines. However, as the years dragged along and brought experience I became an expert on invisibles, and could find more meat between the lines than anywhere else. After that, those letters gave me no pleasure; they inarticulately, but strenuously, demanded pay for the compliments, and they made me ashamed of the offerer; and also of myself, for being a person who, by the offerer’s estimate, was on a low enough grade to value compliments on those terms.

Although I am finding so much fault with this matter I am not ignorant of the fact that compliments are not often given away. A return is expected. And one gets it, too—though not always when the compliments are sent by letter. When an audience applauds, it isn’t aware that it is requiring pay for that compliment. But it is; and if the applause is not in some way thankfully acknowledged by the recipient of it,—by bow and smile, for instance—the audience will discover that it
was
expecting an equivalent. Also, it will withdraw its trade, there and then; it is not going to give something for nothing, not if it knows itself. When a beautiful girl catches a compliment in our eye, she pays spot cash for it with a dear little blush. We did not know we were expecting pay, but if she should flash offended dignity at us, instead of that little blush, we should then know better. She would get no more of our trade on those terms. But in truth, compliments are sometimes actually
given
away, and no bill presented. I know it can occur as much as once in a century, for it has happened once to me, and I am not a century old, yet. It was twenty-nine years ago. I was lecturing in London at the time. I received a most lovely letter, sparkling and glowing with cordial and felicitous praises—and there was
no name signed, and no address!

It was all mine—all free—all gratis—no bill enclosed, nothing to pay, no possible
way
to pay—an absolutely free gift! It is the only gratis compliment I have ever received, it is the only
gratis compliment I have ever even heard of. Whenever a stranger tags his compliment with his name and address, it stands for C.O.D. He may not consciously and deliberately intend it so, but that is because he has not the habit of searching his motives to the bottom. People avoid that. And that is wise in its way, for the most of one’s motives are best concealed from oneself. I know this by long experience and close examination of my own.

It is not right for a stranger to send me his book himself. It is an embarrassment for him, it is an embarrassment for me. I have not earned this treatment, I have not done him any harm. Why not send it through B, and instruct B to say to me, “Take no notice of this unless you are really moved to do it, for A is modest and sensitive, and he would be offended if he knew what I am doing.”

The absence of the club over me would make me feel so grateful that I should find merits in that book that had no existence there nor anywhere else. But no, the author always sends it himself. He knows he is doing an unfair thing; he is ashamed of it, and playfully tries to pretend he isn’t, but his letter always gives him away. He is aware that he is begging. And not for a candid opinion of his book, but for a puff. He is aware that you will want to say that to him, but he is also aware that your self-love will not let you do it. One of two things he always puts in: 1, he admires you; 2, you probably asked and received help and encouragement yourself when you were a struggling beginner. It is a curious absence of tact. He wants a gratuity of you, and prepares the way by putting the thing at you as an obligation—it’s your
duty
to grant it. It may be true, but we resent it, just the same; we don’t want strangers to dictate our duties to us. Sometimes the stranger does this ungracious thing facetiously, sometimes he does it in very plain English; but he is in serious earnest in both cases, and you do not like it any better in the one case than in the other.

I am built just as other people are built, so far as I can discover, and therefore I do prize a good hearty compliment above rubies; and am grateful for it, and as glad as you are yourself when I can in sincerity return the mate to it. But when a man goes beyond compliment, it does not give me pleasure, it makes me ashamed. It makes
me
ashamed; I am not thinking about him, I am thinking about myself; he may humiliate himself if he likes, it is his privilege, but
I
do not want to be humiliated. Adulation. Adulation—spoken or hinted. And never earned; never due, to any human being. What a king must suffer! For he knows, deep down in his heart, that he is a poor, cheap, wormy thing like the rest of us, a sarcasm, the Creator’s prime miscarriage in inventions, the moral inferior of all the animals, the inferior of each one of them in one superb physical specialty or another, the superior of them all in one gift only, and that one not up to
his
estimation of it—intellect.

I do not know how to answer that stranger’s letter. I wish he had spared me. Never mind about him—I am thinking about myself; I wish he had spared
me
. The book has not arrived, yet; but no matter, I am prejudiced against it.

I suppose the reader—if he is an old and experienced person—already knows what it was that I did. I followed custom. I did what one always does after searching for new spirit-quieting methods and finding none: I fell back upon the old, old, over-worked and over-fatigued dodge, trick, subterfuge, polite lie, and wrote him thanking him for his book and promising myself—“at an early date”—the pleasure of reading it.

That set me free: I was not obliged to read the book, now, unless I chose. Being free, my prejudice was gone. My prejudice being gone, a very natural curiosity took its place. Since I could examine the book without putting myself under an obligation of any sort, I opened it and began, as soon as it came. It was a costly adventure for me. I had work to do and no time to spare, but I was not able to put the book down until I had finished it. It embarrassed me a little to write the author and confess this fact, right on the heels of that courteously-discourteous letter which had preceded it, but I did it. I did it because I could get more peace for my spirit out of doing it than out of leaving it undone. Were you thinking I did it to give that author pleasure? I did—at
second hand
. We do no benevolences whose
first
benefit is not for ourselves.

PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE.

Two-thirds of the Presbyteries in Favor of Revising Confession of Faith.

P
HILADELPHIA
, April 27.—The Rev. Dr. W. H. Roberts, Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian General Assembly, announced to-day that two-thirds of the presbyteries had voted in favor of revising the Confession of Faith and of the declaratory statement elucidating chapters 3 and 10 of the Confession. The subject will be finally disposed of by the General Assembly, which will meet in Los Angeles, Cal., next month. It is expected that the overtures from the presbyteries will be enacted by the General Assembly.

RUSSIAN MASSACRE OF JEWS.

Dispatch to a Local Jewish Paper Telling of the Slaughter at Kishinev—120 Reported Killed.

The Jewish Daily News
will print this afternoon the following cable dispatch in reference to the anti-Jewish riot in Kishinev, Russia:

“St. Petersburg, April 25th.—(Taken across the border line for transmission in order to escape the Censor.)—The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia, are worse than the Censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Russian Easter. The mob was led by priests and the general cry: “Kill the Jews!” was taken up all over the city. The Jews were taken totally unaware, and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120, and the injured about 500.

“The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and blood-thirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.

“Just as in the riots of 1880–1881, there is a popular belief among the Russian peasants that the Czar decreed the slaughtering of Jews. The immediate cause of the riot, however, is the ritual murder accusation against the Jews in Dubosary, government of Kherson. Immediate relief is wanted.”