“What in H—–do you want?”
He began with that word “H.” That’s
a long word and a profane word. I don’t
remember what the word was now, but I recognized the
power of it. I had never used that language myself,
but at that moment I was converted. It has been
a great refuge for me in time of trouble. If
a man doesn’t know that language he can’t
express himself on strenuous occasions. When
you have that word at your command let trouble come.
But later Hay rose, and you know what summit Whitelaw
Reid has reached, and you see me. Those two
men have regulated troubles of nations and conferred
peace upon mankind. And in my humble way, of
which I am quite vain, I was the principal moral force
in all those great international movements.
These great men illustrated what I say. Look
at us great people—we all come from the
dregs of society. That’s what can be done
in this country. That’s what this country
does for you.
Choate here—he hasn’t got anything
to say, but he says it just the same, and he can do
it so felicitously, too. I said long ago he was
the handsomest man America ever produced. May
the progress of civilization always rest on such distinguished
men as it has in the past!
AtA banquet given Mr. H. H. Rogers
by the business men of
Norfolk,
Va., Celebrating the opening of the Virginian railway,
April,
3, 1909
Toastmaster:
“I have often thought that
when the time comes, which must come to
all of us, when we reach that Great Way in the Great
Beyond, and the question is propounded,
’What have you done to gain admission
into this great realm?’ if the answer could be
sincerely made, ‘I have made men laugh,’
it would be the surest passport to a welcome
entrance. We have here to-night one who has
made millions laugh—not the loud laughter
that bespeaks the vacant mind, but the laugh
of intelligent mirth that helps the human
heart and the human mind. I refer, of course,
to Doctor Clemens. I was going to
say Mark Twain, his literary title, which
is a household phrase in more homes than that of any
other man, and you know him best by that dear old title.”
I thank you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compliment which
you have paid me, and I am sure I would rather have
made people laugh than cry, yet in my time I have
made some of them cry; and before I stop entirely I
hope to make some more of them cry. I like compliments.
I deal in them myself. I have listened with
the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the
chairman has paid to Mr. Rogers and that road of his
to-night, and I hope some of them are deserved.
It is no small distinction to a man like that to sit
here before an intelligent crowd like this and to
be classed with Napoleon and Caesar. Why didn’t
he say that this was the proudest day of his life?
Napoleon and Caesar are dead, and they can’t
be here to defend themselves. But I’m
here!
