Addressat the first annual dinner,
N. E. Society,
Philadelphia,
December 22, 1881
On
calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response,
President
Rollins said:
“This sentiment has been
assigned to one who was never exactly born
in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors.
He is not technically, therefore, of New
England descent. Under the painful
circumstances in which he has found himself, however,
he has done the best he could—he has had
all his children born there, and has made
of himself a New England ancestor.
He is a self-made man. More than this, and better
even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature
he is of New England ascent. To ascend
there in any thing that’s reasonable is
difficult; for—confidentially, with the
door shut—we all know that they
are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly land
who never leave it, and it is among and above them
that Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and
permanent ascent—become a man
of mark.”
I rise to protest. I have kept still for years;
but really I think there is no sufficient justification
for this sort of thing. What do you want to
celebrate those people for?—those ancestors
of yours of 1620—the Mayflower tribe, I
mean. What do you want to celebrate them for?
Your pardon: the gentleman at my left assures
me that you are not celebrating the Pilgrims themselves,
but the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth rock on
the 22d of December. So you are celebrating their
landing. Why, the other pretext was thin enough,
but this is thinner than ever; the other was tissue,
tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf.
Celebrating their lauding! What was there remarkable
about it, I would like to know? What can you
be thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims had been
at sea three or four months. It was the very
middle of winter: it was as cold as death off
Cape Cod there. Why shouldn’t they come
ashore? If they hadn’t landed there would
be some reason for celebrating the fact: It would
have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which
the world would not willingly let die. If it
had been you, gentlemen, you probably wouldn’t
have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be
celebrating, in your ancestors, gifts which they did
not exercise, but only transmitted. Why, to
be celebrating the mere landing of the Pilgrims —to
be trying to make out that this most natural and simple
and customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstance—a
circumstance to be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized
and glorified, at orgies like this for two hundred
and sixty years—hang it, a horse would have
known enough to land; a horse—Pardon again;
the gentleman on my right assures me that it was not
merely the landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrating,
