 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR.
A FEW months ago I was nominated
for Governor of the
great State of New York, to
run against Mr. John T. Smith and
Mr. Blank J. Blank on an independent
ticket. I somehow felt that I
had one prominent advantage over
these gentlemen, and that was—good
character. It was easy to see by the
newspapers that if ever they had
known what it was to bear a good
name, that time had gone by. It
was plain that in these latter years
they had become familiar with all
manner of shameful crimes. But at the very moment that I was exalting my
advantage and joying in it in secret, there was a muddy undercurrent of
hear my name bandied about in familiar connection with those of such people.
I grew more and more disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it.
Her answer came quick and sharp. She said—
“You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed of—not one. Look at the
newspapers—look at them and comprehend what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are,
and then see if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with
them.”
It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night. But
after all I could not recede. I was fully committed, and must go on with the
fight. As I was looking listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across
this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.
“Perjury.—Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for Governor,
he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses
in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor native
widow and her helpless family of a meagre plantain-patch, their only stay and support in their
bereavement and desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose
suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?”
I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge. I
never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I didn't
know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to do. I was
crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at all.
The next morning the same paper had this—nothing more:—
“Significant.—Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent about the Cochin China
perjury.”
[Mem.—During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in
any other way than as “the infamous perjurer Twain.”]
Next came the Gazette, with this:—
“Wanted to Know.—Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain to certain of his
fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in
Montana losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably
found on Mr. Twain's person or in his `trunk' (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled
to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and feathered him, and rode him
on a rail, and then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in
the camp. Will he do this?”
Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was
in Montana in my life.
[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as “Twain, the Montana
Thief.”
I got to picking up papers apprehensively—much as one would lift a desired
blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. One day
this met my eye:—
“The Lie Nailed!—By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan, Esq., of the Five Points,
and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark
Twain's vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank,
was hanged for highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of foundation in
fact. It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means resorted to to achieve political
success as the attacking of the dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander.
When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and
friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary
and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But no! let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated
conscience (though if passion should get the better of the public, and in its blind fury they should
do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish
the perpetrators of the deed).”
The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed with
despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the “outraged and
insulted public” surged in the front way, breaking furniture and windows in
their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off such property as they
could carry when they went. And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and
say that I never slandered Mr. Blank's grandfather. More: I had never even
heard of him or mentioned him up to that day and date.
[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always referred to
me afterward as “Twain, the Body-Snatcher.”]
The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:—
“A Sweet Candidate.—Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the mass
meeting of the Independents last night, didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician stated
that he had been knocked down by a runaway team, and his leg broken in two places—sufferer
lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the
Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did not know
what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their
standard-bearer. A certain man was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in a state of beastly
intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute was
not Mark Twain himself. We have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The
voice of the people demands in thunder-tones, `Who was that man?”'
It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was really my
name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three long years had
passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine, or liquor of any kind.
[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw
myself confidently dubbed “Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain” in the next issue of
that journal without a pang—notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous
fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]
By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my
mail matter. This form was common—
“How about that old woman you kiked of your premisers which was beging.
Pol Pry.”
And this—
“There is things which you have done which is unbeknowens to anybody but me. You better
trot out a few dols. to yours truly, or you'll hear thro' the papers from Handy Andy.”
This is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was surfeited,
if desirable.
Shortly the principal Republican journal “convicted” me of wholesale
bribery, and the leading Democratic paper “nailed” an aggravated case of
blackmailing to me.
[In this way I acquired two additional names: “Twain the Filthy Corruptionist,”
and “Twain the Loathsome Embracer.”]
By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an “answer” to all the
dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of my party
said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer. As if to
make their appeal the more imperative, the following appeared in one of the
papers the very next day:—
“Behold the Man!—The independent candidate still maintains silence. Because he dare not
speak. Every accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been endorsed and
re-endorsed by his own eloquent silence, till at this day he stands for ever convicted. Look upon
your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher!
Contemplate your incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your
Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon him—ponder him well—and then say if you can give your
honest votes to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares
not open his mouth in denial of any one of them!”
There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so in deep humiliation, I
set about preparing to “answer” a mass of baseless charges and mean and
wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the very next morning a
paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, and seriously charged me
with burning a lunatic asylum with all its inmates, because it obstructed the
charge of poisoning my uncle to get his property, with an imperative demand
that the grave should be opened. This drove me to the verge of distraction.
On top of this I was accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives
to prepare the food for the foundling hospital when I was warden. I was
wavering—wavering. And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless
persecution that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children,
of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush on to the
platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs and call me Pa!
I gave it up. I hauled down my colors and surrendered. I was not equal to
the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the State of New York, and
so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of spirit signed
it, “Truly yours, once a decent man, but now
Mark Twain, I. P., M. T., B. S., D. T., F. C., and L. E.”
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |