Work? I retired from work on my seventieth birthday.
Since then I have been putting in merely twenty-six
hours a day dictating my autobiography, which, as
John Phoenix said in regard to his autograph, may be
relied upon as authentic, as it is written exclusively
by me. But it is not to be published in full
until I am thoroughly dead. I have made it as
caustic, fiendish, and devilish as possible.
It will fill many volumes, and I shall continue writing
it until the time comes for me to join the angels.
It is going to be a terrible autobiography.
It will make the hair of some folks curl. But
it cannot be published until I am dead, and the persons
mentioned in it and their children and grandchildren
are dead. It is something awful!
“Can you tell us the names of some of the notables
that are here to see you off?”
I don’t know. I am so shy. My shyness
takes a peculiar phase. I never look a person
in the face. The reason is that I am afraid they
may know me and that I may not know them, which makes
it very embarrassing for both of us. I always
wait for the other person to speak. I know lots
of people, but I don’t know who they are.
It is all a matter of ability to observe things.
I never observe anything now. I gave up the
habit years ago. You should keep a habit up
if you want to become proficient in it. For instance,
I was a pilot once, but I gave it up, and I do not
believe the captain of the Minneapolis would let me
navigate his ship to London. Still, if I think
that he is not on the job I may go up on the bridge
and offer him a few suggestions.
Five hundred undergraduates, under
the auspices of the Woman’s University
Club, New York, welcomed Mr. Clemens as their guest,
April 3, 1906, and gave him the freedom of
the club, which the chairman explained was
freedom to talk individually to any girl present.
I’ve worked for the public good thirty years,
so for the rest of my life I shall work for my personal
contentment. I am glad Miss Neron has fed me,
for there is no telling what iniquity I might wander
into on an empty stomach—I mean, an empty
mind.
I am going to tell you a practical story about how
once upon a time I was blind—a story I
should have been using all these months, but I never
thought about telling it until the other night, and
now it is too late, for on the nineteenth of this
month I hope to take formal leave of the platform
forever at Carnegie Hall—that is, take leave
so far as talking for money and for people who have
paid money to hear me talk. I shall continue
to infest the platform on these conditions—that
there is nobody in the house who has paid to hear
me, that I am not paid to be heard, and that there
will be none but young women students in the audience.
[Here Mr. Clemens told the story of how he took a
girl to the theatre while he was wearing tight boots,
which appears elsewhere in this volume, and ended
by saying: “And now let this be a lesson
to you—I don’t know what kind of
a lesson; I’ll let you think it out.”]
