 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
A MYSTERIOUS VISIT.
The first notice that was taken of me when I “settled down” recently, was by
a gentleman who said he was an assessor, and connected with the U. S.
Internal Revenue Department. I said I had never heard of his branch of
business before, but I was very glad to see him all the same—would he sit down?
He sat down. I did not know anything particular to say, and yet I felt that people
who have arrived at the dignity of keeping house must be conversational, must be
easy and sociable in company. So, in default of anything else to say, I asked him
if he was opening his shop in our neighborhood?
He said he was. [I did not wish to appear ignorant, but I had hoped he would
mention what he had for sale.]
I ventured to ask him “How was trade?” And he said “So-so.”
I then said we would drop in, and if we liked his house as well as any other, we
would give him our custom.
He said he thought we would like his establishment well enough to confine ourselves
to it—said he never saw anybody who would go off and hunt up another
man in his line after trading with him once.
That sounded pretty complacent, but barring that natural expression of villainy
which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
I do not know how it came about exactly, but gradually we appeared to melt
down and run together, conversationally speaking, and then everything went along
as comfortably as clockwork.
We talked, and talked, and talked—at least I did; and we laughed, and laughed,
and laughed—at least he did. But all the time I had my presence of mind about
me—I had my native shrewdness turned on “full head,” as the engineers say. I
was determined to find out all about his business in spite of his obscure answers—
and I was determined I would have it out of him without his suspecting what I was
at. I meant to trap him with a deep, deep ruse. I would tell him all about my
own business, and he would naturally so warm to me during this seductive burst
of confidence that he would forget himself, and tell me all about his affairs before
he suspected what I was about. I thought to myself, My son, you little know what
an old fox you are dealing with. I said—
“Now you never would guess what I made lecturing this winter and last spring?”
“No—don't believe I could, to save me. Let me see—let me see. About two
thousand dollars, maybe? But no; no, sir, I know you couldn't have made that
much. Say seventeen hundred, maybe?”
“Ha! ha! I knew you couldn't. My lecturing receipts for last spring and this
winter were fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. What do you
think of that?”
“Why, it is amazing—perfectly amazing. I will make a note of it. And you
say even this wasn't all?”
“All! Why bless you, there was my income from the Daily Warwhoop for four
months—about—about—well, what should you say to about eight thousand dollars,
for instance?”
“Say! Why, I should say I should like to see myself rolling in just such another
ocean of affluence. Eight thousand! I'll make a note of it. Why man!—and on
top of all this I am to understand that you had still more income?”
“Ha! ha! ha! Why, you're only in the suburbs of it, so to speak. There's my
book, `The Innocents Abroad'—price $3.50 to $5.00, according to the binding.
Listen to me. Look me in the eye. During the last four months and a half, saying
nothing of sales before that, but just simply during the four months and a half, we've
sold ninety-five thousand copies of that book. Ninety-five thousand! Think of
it. Average four dollars a copy, say. It's nearly four hundred thousand dollars,
my son. I get half.”
“The suffering Moses! I'll set that down. Fourteen-seven-fifty—eight—two
hundred. Total, say—well, upon my word, the grand total is about two hundred
and thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars! Is that possible?”
“Possible! If there's any mistake it's the other way. Two hundred and fourteen
thousand, cash, is my income for this year if I know how to cipher.”
Then the gentleman got up to go. It came over me most uncomfortably that
maybe I had made my revelations for nothing, besides being flattered into stretching
them considerably by the stranger's astonished exclamations. But no; at the
last moment the gentleman handed me a large envelope, and said it contained his
advertisement; and that I would find out all about his business in it; and that he
would be happy to have my custom—would in fact, be proud to have the custom
of a man of such prodigious income; and that he used to think there were several
wealthy men in the city, but when they came to trade with him, he discovered that
they barely had enough to live on; and that, in truth it had been such a weary,
weary age since he had seen a rich man face to face, and talked to him, and
touched him with his hands, that he could hardly refrain from embracing me—in
fact, would esteem it a great favor if I would let him embrace me.
This so pleased me that I did not try to resist, but allowed this simple-hearted
stranger to throw his arms about me and weep a few tranquilizing tears down the
back of my neck. Then he went his way.
As soon as he was gone I opened his advertisement. I studied it attentively for
four minutes. I then called up the cook, and said—
“Hold me while I faint! Let Marie turn the griddle-cakes.”
By and by, when I came to, I sent down to the rum mill on the corner and hired
an artist by the week to sit up nights and curse that stranger, and give me a lift
occasionally in the daytime when I came to a hard place.
Ah, what a miscreant he was! His “advertisement” was nothing in the world
but a wicked tax-return—a string of impertinent questions about my private affairs,
occupying the best part of four foolscap pages of fine print—questions, I may
remark, gotten up with such marvelous ingenuity, that the oldest man in the world
couldn't understand what the most of them were driving at—questions, too, that
were calculated to make a man report about four times his actual income to keep
from swearing to a falsehood. I looked for a loophole, but there did not appear
to be any. Inquiry No. 1 covered by case as generously and as amply as an
umbrella could cover an ant hill—
“What were your profits, during the past year, from any trade, business, or vocation, wherever
carried on?”
And that inquiry was backed up by thirteen others of an equally searching
nature, the most modest of which required information as to whether I had
committed any burglary or highway robbery, or by any arson or other secret source
of emolument, and acquired property which was not enumerated in my statement
of income as set opposite to inquiry No. 1.
It was plain that that stranger had enabled me to make a goose of myself. It
was very, very plain; and so I went out and hired another artist. By working on
my vanity, the stranger had seduced me into declaring an income of $214,000. By
law, $1000 of this was exempt from income-tax—the only relief I could see, and it
was only a drop in the ocean. At the legal five per cent, I must pay to the Government
the sum of ten thousand six hundred and fifty dollars, income-tax!
[I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it.]
I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose table
is regal, whose outlays are enormous, yet a man who has no income, as I have often
noticed by the revenue returns; and to him I went for advice, in my distress. He
took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he put on his glasses, he took his pen, and
simply by deftly manipulating the bill of “Deductions.” He set down my
“State, national, and municipal taxes” at so much; my “losses by shipwreck,
fire, etc.,” at so much; my “losses on sales of real estate”—on “live stock sold”
—on payments for rent of homestead”—on “repairs, improvements, interest”—on
“previously taxed salary as an officer of the United States' army, navy, revenue
service,” and other things. He got astonishing “deductions” out of each and
every one of these matters—each and every one of them. And when he was done
he handed me the paper, and I saw at a glance that during the year my income, in
the way of profits, had been one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars and forty cents.
“Now,” said he, “the thousand dollars is exempt by law. What you want to do
is to go and swear this document in and pay tax on the two hundred and fifty
dollars.”
[While he was making this speech his little boy Willie lifted a two dollar greenback
out of his vest pocket and vanished with it, and I would wager anything that
if my stranger were to call on that little boy to-morrow he would make a false
return of his income.]
“Do you,” said I, “do you always work up the `deductions' after this fashion in
your own case, sir?”
“Well, I should say so! If it weren't for those eleven saving clauses under the
head of `Deduction' I should be beggared every year to support this hateful and
wicked, this extortionate and tyrannical government.”
This gentleman stands away up among the very best of the solid men of the
city—the men of moral weight, of commercial integrity, of unimpeachable social
spotlessness—and so I bowed to his example. I went down to the revenue office,
and under the accusing eyes of my old visitor I stood up and swore to lie after lie,
fraud after fraud, villainy after villainy, till my soul was coated inches and inches
thick with perjury, and my self-respect gone for ever and ever.
But what of it? It is nothing more than thousands of the richest and proudest,
and most respected, honored, and courted men in America do every year. And so
I don't care. I am not ashamed. I shall simply, for the present, talk little, and
eschew fire-proof gloves, lest I fall into certain dreadful habits irrevocably.
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