Addressdelivered April 29, 1901
In
introducing Mr. Clemens, Doctor Van Dyke said:
“The longer the speaking
goes on to-night the more I wonder how I
got this job, and the only explanation I can give for
it is that it is the same kind of compensation
for the number of articles I have sent to
The Outlook, to be rejected by Hamilton W.
Mabie. There is one man here to-night that has
a job cut out for him that none of you would
have had—a man whose humor has
put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose sense
of humor has been an example for all five
continents. He is going to speak to
you. Gentlemen, you know him best as Mark Twain.”
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen,—This man knows
now how it feels to be the chief guest, and if he
has enjoyed it he is the first man I have ever seen
in that position that did enjoy it. And I know,
by side-remarks which he made to me before his ordeal
came upon him, that he was feeling as some of the
rest of us have felt under the same circumstances.
He was afraid that he would not do himself justice;
but he did—to my surprise. It is a
most serious thing to be a chief guest on an occasion
like this, and it is admirable, it is fine.
It is a great compliment to a man that he shall come
out of it so gloriously as Mr. Mabie came out of it
tonight—to my surprise. He did it
well.
He appears to be editor of The Outlook, and notwithstanding
that, I have every admiration, because when everything
is said concerning The Outlook, after all one must
admit that it is frank in its delinquencies, that it
is outspoken in its departures from fact, that it is
vigorous in its mistaken criticisms of men like me.
I have lived in this world a long, long time, and
I know you must not judge a man by the editorials that
he puts in his paper. A man is always better
than his printed opinions. A man always reserves
to himself on the inside a purity and an honesty and
a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things
that he prints are just the reverse.
Oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he writes
in his paper. Even in an ordinary secular paper
a man must observe some care about it; he must be
better than the principles which he puts in print.
And that is the case with Mr. Mabie. Why, to
see what he writes about me and the missionaries you
would think he did not have any principles. But
that is Mr. Mabie in his public capacity. Mr.
Mabie in his private capacity is just as clean a man
as I am.
