Gentlemen,—There are but two places
in our whole street where lights could be of any value,
by any accident, and you have measured and appointed
your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those
places in the centre of a couple of hundred yards
of solid darkness. When I noticed that you were
setting one of your lights in such a way that I could
almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected
that it was a piece of carelessness on the part of
the workmen, and would be corrected as soon as you
should go around inspecting and find it out.
My judgment was right; it is always right, when you
axe concerned. For fifteen years, in spite of
my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a gas
lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn’t
find either of them after dark; and then furnished
such execrable gas that I had to hang a danger signal
on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it,
nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to
leave us a little more in the dark.
Don’t mind us—out our way; we possess
but one vote apiece, and no rights which you are in
any way bound to respect. Please take your electric
light and go to—but never mind, it is not
for me to suggest; you will probably find the way;
and any way you can reasonably count on divine assistance
if you lose your bearings.
S.
L. Clemens.
[Etext Editor’s Note: Twain
wrote another note to Hartford Gas and Electric,
which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not
include in these volumes: “Gentleman:—Someday
you are going to move me almost to the point of
irritation with your God-damned chuckle headed fashion
of turning off your God-damned gas without giving
notice to your God-damned parishioners—and
you did it again last night—” D.W.]
Frequently Clemens did not send letters
of this sort after they were written. Sometimes
he realized the uselessness of such protest, sometimes
the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary
relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the
wastebasket, and wrote something more temperate,
or nothing at all. A few such letters here
follow.
Clemens was all the time receiving
application from people who wished him to recommend
one article or another; books, plays, tobacco,
and what not. They were generally persistent
people, unable to accept a polite or kindly denial.
Once he set down some remarks on this particular
phase of correspondence. He wrote:
I
No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest
in many and many an electrical project, for the use
of his name to float it withal. And no doubt
all men who have achieved for their names, in any line
of activity whatever, a sure market value, have been
familiar with this sort of solicitation. Reputation
is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure
silver, and it can also make the plated article pass
for pure.
Copyrights
Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 4 (1886-1900) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
