:: :: University of Virginia Library

The Critic of November 28, 1885 (vol. 7) had featured a celebration of Clemens's "Semi-Centennial" with tributes from Oliver Wendell Holmes (a poem), Frank R. Stockton, Charles Dudley Warner, and Joel Chandler Harris (letters). Clemens responded on December 5 (p. 271):

My Dear Conspirators:

—It was the pleasantest surprise I have ever had, and you have my best thanks. It reconciles me to being fifty years old; and it was for you to invent the miracle that could do that—I could never have invented one myself that could do it. May you live to be fifty yourselves, and find a fellow-benefactor in that hour of awful need.

Sincerely yours,
S. L. Clemens Hartford, Nov. 20, 1885

The following issue (Dec. 12, p. 283) quoted from an undated letter of Clemens on the same topic to an unnamed correspondent:

Every mail brings me letters from people who seem glad I'm fifty years old. I do not see what I have done to have so many enemies. I have never congratulated a person

213

for being fifty years of age. It is true I have shot at people in the dark when I have had something unusual against them, but I have drawn the line there.

Another reference is of value for establishing the first printing and early text of a Clemens poem. Arthur L. Scott has reprinted Twain's verses "Contract With Mrs. T. K. Beecher, July 2, 1895," which he describes as "First printed in Munsey's Magazine, October, 1895."[2] But two months before that "The Lounger" column of The Critic (27 [Aug. 3, 1895], 79) quotes a "current paragraph" for the text of the verses and the circumstances that gave them rise. As not many readers will have ready access to The Critic and/or the verses themselves, I quote the whole entry:

A current paragraph reports Mrs. Thomas K. Beecher as having concluded a conversation on immortality, in which Mark Twain had "taken the agnostic side," by asking him whether he would confess his error, if he should meet her in Heaven a million years hence. Mark promised that he would, and sealed the promise by writing appropriate stanzas on three stones found on the banks of the Chemung River, the three stones being fragments of what once was a single rock. The "contract" is dated Elmira, N. Y., 2 July 1895; and here are the terms of it:—

"If you prove right and I prove wrong,
A million years from now,
In language plain and frank and strong,
My error I'll avow.
(To your dear mocking face)."

"If I prove right, by God His grace,
Full sorry I shall be,
For in that solitude no trace
There'll be of you and me,
(Nor of our vanished race)."

"A million years, O patient stone!
You've waited for this message.
Deliver it a million years—
Survivor pays expressage."

In line 5 of Scott's version, the word "mocking" has been changed to the possibly puzzling "waking." In line 11, "years" becomes "hence." Scott notes only that the poem was "Written on three leaves of stone"; the circumstances and details in The Critic make its origin more understandable.

A final reference (31 [July 3, 1897], 8) reprints a letter of Clemens in response to a benefit fund that had been established for him.

Mark Twain lost a fine opportunity to add to his reputation as a humorist in his letter declining the Hearld's fund for his benefit, after first having accepted it. His letter is one to make his many friends weep rather than smile. Here it is:—

"To the Editor of the Herald:—

"I made no revelation to my family of your generous undertaking in my behalf and for my relief from debt, and in that I was wrong. Now that they know all about the matter they contend I have no right to allow my friends to help me while my health is good and my ability to work remains, that it is not fair to my friends and

214

not justifiable, and that it will be time enough to accept help when it shall be proven that I am no longer able to work. I am persuaded that they are right. While they are grateful for what you have done and for the kindly instinct which prompted you, it is urgent that the contributions be returned to the givers with their thanks and mine. I yield to their desire and forward their request and my indorsement of it to you. I was glad when you initiated that movement, for I was tired of the fact and worry of debt, but I recognize that it is not permissible for a man whose case is not hopeless to shift his burdens to other men's shoulders.

"London, 19 June 1897.
S. L. Clemens."

In his biography Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (1966) Justin Kaplan describes this project of the New York Herald (p. 349), but he does not mention Clemens's letter to the newspaper.