It may be well enough to explain. The man of
the 13th January is Adam; the crime of that date was
the eating of the apple; the sorrowful spectacle of
the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the
grisly deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel;
the act of the 3d September was the beginning of the
journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of October,
the last mountaintops disappeared under the flood.
When you go to church in France, you want to take
your almanac with you—annotated.
Extractfrom “The history of the
savage club”
During that period of gloom when
domestic bereavement had forced Mr. Clemens
and his dear ones to secure the privacy they craved
until their wounds should heal, his address was known
to only a very few of his closest friends.
One old friend in New York, after vain
efforts to get his address, wrote him a letter addressed
as follows
Marktwain,
God
Knows Where,
Try
London.
The letter found him, and Mr.
Clemens replied to the letter expressing
himself surprised and complimented that the person
who was credited with knowing his whereabouts
should take so much interest in him, adding:
“Had the letter been addressed to the
care of the ‘other party,’ I would naturally
have expected to receive it without delay.”
His
correspondent tried again, and addressed the second
letter:
Marktwain,
The
Devil Knows Where,
Try
London.
This
found him also no less promptly.
On June 9, 1899, he consented
to visit the Savage Club, London, on condition
that there was to be no publicity and no speech was
to be expected from him. The toastmaster, in
proposing the health of their guest, said
that as a Scotchman, and therefore as a
born expert, he thought Mark Twain had little or no
claim to the title of humorist. Mr.
Clemens had tried to be funny but had failed,
and his true role in life was statistics; that he
was a master of statistics, and loved them for their
own sake, and it would be the easiest task
he ever undertook if he would try to count
all the real jokes he had ever made. While the
toastmaster was speaking, the members saw Mr. Clemens’s
eyes begin to sparkle and his cheeks to flush.
He jumped up, and made a characteristic
speech.
Perhaps I am not a humorist, but I am a first-class
fool—a simpleton; for up to this moment
I have believed Chairman MacAlister to be a decent
person whom I could allow to mix up with my friends
and relatives. The exhibition he has just made
of himself reveals him to be a scoundrel and a knave
of the deepest dye. I have been cruelly deceived,
and it serves me right for trusting a Scotchman.
Yes, I do understand figures, and I can count.
I have counted the words in MacAlister’s drivel
(I certainly cannot call it a speech), and there were
exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine.
I also carefully counted the lies—there
were exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine.
Therefore, I leave MacAlister to his fate.
