University of Virginia Library

Answers to Correspondents.

“Moral Statistician.”—I don't want any of your statistics;
I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate
your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much
a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired,
and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in
the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice
of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking
coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking
a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. etc. And you are always
figuring out how many women have been burned to death
because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops,
etc. etc. etc. You never see more than one side of the
question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in
America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your
theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old
Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen
both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and
fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much
solid comfort relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from
smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times
the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling
aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of
people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself
all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do

with it? What use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul.
All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this
life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use
of accumulating cash? It won't do for you to say that you can use it to
better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting
tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty
vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves
so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you
never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you
in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are
always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box
comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a full statement
of your income. Now you know all these things yourself, don't you? Very
well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and
withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless
to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be
always trying to seduce people into becoming as “ornery” and unloveable as you
are yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics?” Now, I don't approve of
dissipation, and I don't indulge in it either; but I haven't a particle of confidence
in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so I don't want to hear from
you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture
last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my
absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful
parlor stove.

“Young Author.”—Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because
the phosphorus in it makes brains. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you
to a decision about the amount you need to eat—at least, not with certainty. If
the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge
that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not
the largest kind, but simply good, middling-sized whales.

“Simon Wheeler,” Sonora.—The following simple and touching remarks and

accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region of
Sonora:—

To Mr. Mark Twain: The within parson, which I have set to poetry under the name and style
of “He Done His Level Best,” was one among the whitest men I ever see, and it an't every man
that knowed him that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is busted and gone
home to the States. He was here in an early day, and he was the handyest man about takin' holt
of anything that come along you most ever see, I judge. He was a cheerful, stirrin' cretur,
always doin' somethin', and no man can say he ever see him do anything by halvers. Preachin'
was his nateral gait, but he warn't a man to lay back and twidle his thumbs because there didn't
happen to be nothin' doin' in his own especial line—no, sir, he was a man who would meander
forth and stir up something for hisself. His last acts was to go his pile on “kings-and” (calklatin'
to fill, but which he didn't fill), when there was a “flush” out agin him, and naterally, you see, he
went under. And so he was cleaned out, as you may say, and he struck the home-trail, cheerful
but flat broke. I knowed this talonted man in Arkansaw, and if you would print this humbly
tribute to his gorgis abilities, you would greatly obleege his onhappy friend.

HE DONE HIS LEVEL BEST.

Verily, this man was gifted with “gorgis abilities,” and it is a happiness to me to
embalm the memory of their lustre in these columns. If it were not that the poet
crop is unusually large and rank in California this year, I would encourage you to
continue writing, Simon Wheeler; but, as it is, perhaps it might be too risky in you
to enter against so much opposition.

“Professional Beggar.” No; you are not obliged to take greenbacks at par.

“Melton Mowbray,”[2] Dutch Flat.—This correspondent sends a lot of doggerel,
and says it has been regarded as very good in Dutch Flat. I give a specimen
verse:—

There, that will do. That may be very good Dutch Flat poetry, but it won't do
in the metropolis. It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like buttermilk gurgling
from a jug. What the people ought to have is something spirited—something like
“Johnny Comes Marching Home.” However, keep on practising, and you may
succeed yet. There is genius in you, but too much blubber.

You should set your affections on another, also—or on several, if there are
enough to go round. Also, do everything you can to make your former flame
unhappy. There is an absurd idea disseminated in novels, that the happier a girl
is with another man, the happier it makes the old lover she has blighted. Don't
allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as that. The more cause that girl
finds to regret that she did not marry you, the more comfortable you will feel over
it. It isn't poetical, but it is mighty sound doctrine.

I don't know.

“Ambitious Learner,” Oakland.—Yes; you are right—America was not discovered
by Alexander Selkirk.

Of course you have. All the law, written and unwritten, is on you side. The
intention and not the act constitutes crime—in other words, constitutes the deed.
If you call your bosom friend a fool, and intend it for an insult, it is an insult; but
if you do it playfully, and meaning no insult, it is not an insult. If you discharge
a pistol accidentally, and kill a man, you can go free, for you have done no murder;
but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend to kill him, but fail utterly to do
it, the law still holds that the intention constituted the crime, and you are guilty of
murder. Ergo, if you had married Edwitha accidentally, and without really intending
to do it, you would not actually be married to her at all, because the act of
marriage could not be complete without the intention. And ergo, in the strict spirit
of the law, since you deliberately intended to marry Edwitha, and didn't do it, you

are married to her all the same—because, as I said before, the intention constitutes
the crime. It is as clear as day that Edwitha is your wife, and your redress lies in
taking a club and mutilating Jones with it as much as you can. Any man has a
right to protect his own wife from the advances of other men. But you have
another alternative—you were married to Edwitha first, because of your deliberate
intention, and now you can prosecute her for bigamy, in subsequently marrying
Jones. But there is another phase in this complicated case: You intended to marry
Edwitha, and consequently, according to law, she is your wife—there is no getting
around that; but she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you, you
are not her husband, of course. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of bigamy,
because she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all very well as far
as it goes—but then, don't you see, she had no other husband when she married
Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of bigamy. Now, according to this
view of the case, Jones married a spinster, who was a widow at the same time and
another man's wife at the same time, and yet who had no husband and never had
one, and never had any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never
had been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you have
never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a wife living;
and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have been deprived of that
wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia in the first place, while things
were so mixed. And by this time I have got myself so tangled up in the intricacies
of this extraordinary case that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise
you—I might get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could
take up the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile, perhaps I
could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed at all, or that you
are dead now, and consequently don't need the faithless Edwitha—I think I could
do that, if it would afford you any comfort.

“Arthur Augustus.”—No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a
brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you will hurt
somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down, take it by the stems,
and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever pitch quoits? that is the idea.
The practice of recklessly heaving immense solid bouquets, of the general size and

weight of prize cabbages, from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and
very reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just after
Signorina — had finished that exquisite melody, “The Last Rose of Summer,”
one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the atmosphere of
applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right, it would have driven
her into the floor like a shingle-nail. Of course that bouquet was well meant; but
how would you like to have been the target? A sincere compliment is always
grateful to a lady, so long as you don't try to knock her down with it.

“Young Mother.”—And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy
forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks the same
of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly, but still she thinks
it nevertheless. I honor the cow for it. We all honor this touching maternal
instinct wherever we find it, be it in the home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed.
But really, madam, when I come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find
that the correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases. A soiled
baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of
beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short years, no baby is competent
to be a joy “forever.” It pains me thus to demolish two-thirds of your pretty
sentiment in a single sentence; but the position I hold in this chair requires that I
shall not permit you to deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures
of speech. I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot
hold out as a “joy” twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone “forever.” And it
possesses some of the most remarkable eccentricities of character and appetite that
have ever fallen under my notice. I will set down here a statement of this infant's
operations (conceived, planned, and carried out by itself, and without suggestion
or assistance from its mother or any one else), during a single day; and what I
shall say can be substantiated by the sworn testimony of witnesses.

It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all; then it
fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a blue and purple knot on its forehead,
after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment and amusement. It found
a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work—smashed up and ate the glass, and
then swallowed the brass. Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and

more than a dozen tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor. The reason why it
took no more laudanum was because there was no more to take. After this it lay
down on its back, and shoved five or six inches of a silver-headed whale-bone cane
down its throat; got it fast there, and it was all its mother could do to pull the cane
out again, without pulling out some of the child with it. Then, being hungry for
glass again, it broke up several wine-glasses, and fell to eating and swallowing the
fragments, not minding a cut or two. Then it ate a quantity of butter, pepper,
salt, and California matches, actually taking a spoonful of butter, a spoonful of salt,
a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer matches at each mouthful. (I will
remark here that this thing of beauty likes painted German lucifers, and eats all
she can get of them; but she prefers California matches, which I regard as a compliment
to our home manufactures of more than ordinary value, coming, as it does,
from one who is too young to flatter.) Then she washed her head with soap and
water, and afterwards ate what soap was left, and drank as much of the suds as she
had room for; after which she sallied forth and took the cow familiarly by the tail,
and got kicked heels over head. At odd times during the day, when this joy for
ever happened to have nothing particular on hand, she put in the time by climbing
up on places, and falling down off them, uniformly damaging herself in the operation.
As young as she is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly; and being
plain-spoken in other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with
all strangers, male or female, with the same formula, “How do, Jim?” Not being
familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have been magnifying into
matter of surprise things which may not strike any one who is familiar with infancy
as being at all astonishing. However, I cannot believe that such is the case, and
so I repeat that my report of this baby's performances is strictly true; and if any
one doubts it, I can produce the child. I will further engage that she will devour
anything that is given her (reserving to myself only the right to exclude anvils),
and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated (merely stipulating
that her preference for alighting on her head shall be respected, and, therefore,
that the elevation chosen shall be high enough to enable her to accomplish this to
her satisfaction.) But I find I have wandered from my subject; so, without further
argument, I will reiterate my conviction that not all babies are things of beauty
and joys forever.

Here you come again with your arithmetical conundrums, when I am suffering
death with a cold in the head. If you could have seen the expression of scorn that
darkened my countenance a moment ago, and was instantly split from the centre
in every direction like a fractured looking-glass by my last sneeze, you never would
have written that disgraceful question. Conchology is a science which has nothing
to do with mathematics: it relates only to shells. At the same time, however, a
man who opens oysters for a hotel, or shells a fortified town, or sucks eggs, is not,
strictly speaking, a conchologist—a fine stroke of sarcasm that, but it will be lost
on such an unintellectual clam as you. Now compare conchology and geometry
together, and you will see what the difference is, and your question will be answered.
But don't torture me with any more arithmetical horrors until you know I am rid
of my cold. I feel the bitterest animosity towards you at this moment—bothering
me in this way, when I can do nothing but sneeze and rage and snort pocket-handkerchiefs
to atoms. If I had you in range of my nose, now, I would blow
your brains out.