Three short years went by, and a day came when the
man sat shivering in a mean garret; and he was gaunt
and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags; and
he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:
“Curse all the world’s gifts, for mockeries
and gilded lies! And miscalled, every one.
They are not gifts, but merely lendings. Pleasure,
Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises
for lasting realities—Pain, Grief, Shame,
Poverty. The fairy said true; in all her store
there was but one gift which was precious, only one
that was not valueless. How poor and cheap and
mean I know those others now to be, compared with
that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly
one, that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the
pains that persecute the body, and the shames and
griefs that eat the mind and heart. Bring it!
I am weary, I would rest.”
The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts,
but Death was wanting. She said:
“I gave it to a mother’s pet, a little
child. It was ignorant, but trusted me, asking
me to choose for it. You did not ask me to choose.”
“Oh, miserable me! What is left for me?”
“What not even you have deserved: the
wanton insult of Old Age.”
From My Unpublished Autobiography
Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten
sheet, faded by age, containing the following letter
over the signature of Mark Twain:
“Hartford, March 10, 1875.
“Please do not use my name in any way.
Please do not even divulge that fact that I own a
machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter,
for the reason that I never could write a letter with
it to anybody without receiving a request by return
mail that I would not only describe the machine, but
state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc.,
etc. I don’t like to write letters,
and so I don’t want people to know I own this
curiosity-breeding little joker.”
A note was sent to Mr. Clemens asking him if the letter
was genuine and whether he really had a typewriter
as long ago as that. Mr. Clemens replied that
his best answer is the following chapter from his
unpublished autobiography:
1904. Villa Quarto, Florence,
January.
Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience
for me, but it goes very well, and is going to save
time and “language” —the kind
of language that soothes vexation.
