Doctor McKelway paid the top compliment, the cumulation,
when he said of Mr. Carnegie:
“There is a man who wants to pay more taxes
than he is charged.” Richard Watson Gilder
did very well for a poet. He advertised his magazine.
He spoke of hiring Mr. Carnegie—the next
thing he will be trying to hire me.
If I undertook—to pay compliments I would
do it stronger than any others have done it, for what
Mr. Carnegie wants are strong compliments. Now,
the other side of seventy, I have preserved, as my
chiefest virtue, modesty.
Addressat A dinner of the Manhattan
dickens fellowship,
new
York city, February 7, 1906
This dinner was in commemoration
of the ninety-fourth anniversary of the
birth of Charles Dickens. On an other occasion
Mr. Clemens told the same story with variations and
a different conclusion to the University
Settlement Society.
I always had taken an interest in young people who
wanted to become poets. I remember I was particularly
interested in one budding poet when I was a reporter.
His name was Butter.
One day he came to me and said, disconsolately, that
he was going to commit suicide—he was tired
of life, not being able to express his thoughts in
poetic form. Butter asked me what I thought of
the idea.
I said I would; that it was a good idea. “You
can do me a friendly turn. You go off in a private
place and do it there, and I’ll get it all.
You do it, and I’ll do as much for you some
time.”
At first he determined to drown himself. Drowning
is so nice and clean, and writes up so well in a newspaper.
But things ne’er do go smoothly in weddings,
suicides, or courtships. Only there at the edge
of the water, where Butter was to end himself, lay
a life-preserver—a big round canvas one,
which would float after the scrap-iron was soaked
out of it.
Butter wouldn’t kill himself with the life-preserver
in sight, and so I had an idea. I took it to
a pawnshop, and [soaked] it for a revolver: The
pawnbroker didn’t think much of the exchange,
but when I explained the situation he acquiesced.
We went up on top of a high building, and this is
what happened to the poet:
He put the revolver to his forehead and blew a tunnel
straight through his head. The tunnel was about
the size of your finger. You could look right
through it. The job was complete; there was nothing
in it.
Well, after that that man never could write prose,
but he could write poetry. He could write it
after he had blown his brains out. There is
lots of that talent all over the country, but the trouble
is they don’t develop it.
I am suffering now from the fact that I, who have
told the truth a good many times in my life, have
lately received more letters than anybody else urging
me to lead a righteous life. I have more friends
who want to see me develop on a high level than anybody
else.
