What Is Man?

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> What Is Man?


She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart,
in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without
it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification of
its creation; WOULD be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her down
re-establishes the doubt.

In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages
respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and
her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and
brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter
griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest
honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She
knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An English
fisherman's wife said, "When a body was in trouble she didn't send her
help, she brought it herself." Crowns have adorned others, but she
adorned her crowns.

It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some
curious contrasts. At noon last, Saturday there was no one in the world
who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth
claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an
acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued
the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was
sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom
grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject of
conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and governors
were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside
their other interests to talk about him. And wherever there was a man, at
the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at some
time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a secret
satisfaction, and MENTIONED it--for it was a distinction, now! It brings
human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite
realizable--but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who can
remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has let
that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way,
some dozens of times during the past week. For a king is merely human;
the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person; and it
is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way
connected with amazing events. We are all privately vain of such a thing;
we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us
are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out of
the same clay, and it is a sufficient poor quality.

Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it well
as if I were hearing them:

THE COMMANDER: "He was in my army."

THE GENERAL: "He was in my corps."

THE COLONEL: "He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well."

THE CAPTAIN: "He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember
him well."

THE SERGEANT: "Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every morning
I used to--" etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears.

THE LANDLADY: "Many's the time he boarded with me. I can show you his
very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there on
the wall--he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own
eyes. Didn't you, Johnny?"

It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables
and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings as
precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful
distinction. The interviewer, too; he tried to let on that he is not
vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are
allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more
keep his vanity corked in than could you or I.

Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal
militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor
mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One
may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs
done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any
kind. When he saw his photograph and said, "I shall be celebrated," he
laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for
notoriety. There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old as
history--the burning of the temple of Ephesus.

Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
concede high rank to the many which have described it as a "peculiarly
brutal crime" and then added that it was "ordained from above." I think
this verdict will not be popular "above." If the deed was ordained from
above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially
responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without
manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by disregarding its
laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into
preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the
shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.

I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the
windows of the Krantz, Vienna's sumptuous new hotel. We came into town
in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on foot from the station.
Black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were Sunday-like;
the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly; very few people
were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black as
a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and
coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were
closed; in many windows were pictures of the Empress: as a beautiful
young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added years;
and finally in deep black and without ornaments--the costume she always
wore after the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her heart
broke then, and life lost almost all its value for her. The people stood
grouped before these pictures, and now and then one saw women and girls
turn away wiping the tears from their eyes.

In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way was the church
where the funeral services would be held. It is small and old and
severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with no
ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that
a small black flag. But in its crypt lie several of the great dead of
the House of Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon's son, the
Duke of Reichstadt. Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius died a thousand years before the first Habsburg
ruled in Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more.

The little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses, and
the windows of them were full of people. Behind the vast plate-glass
windows of the upper floors of the house on the corner one glimpsed
terraced masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like
people under water. Under us the square was noiseless, but it was full
of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands,
and in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty,
the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty,
he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing
apart and munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. Blazing
uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping
ruin of moldy rags, but he took not notice; he was not there to grieve
for a nation's disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. From two
directions two long files of infantry came plowing through the pack and
press in silence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished,
the square save the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone.
Another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed the square in a
double-ranked human fence. It was all so swift, noiseless, exact--like a
beautifully ordered machine.

It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waiting followed. Then
carriages began to flow past and deliver the two and three hundred court
personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. Then the
square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in
showy and beautiful uniforms. They filled it compactly, leaving only a
narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian
among them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the
radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and
on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of
color--intense red, gold, and white--which dimmed the brilliancies around
them; and opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch of
cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another
splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings.
It was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two groups were the
high notes. The green plumes were worn by forty or fifty Austrian
generals, the group opposite them were chiefly Knights of Malta and
knights of a German order. The mass of heads in the square were covered
by gilt helmets and by military caps roofed with a mirror-like gaze, and
the movements of the wearers caused these things to catch the sun-rays,
and the effect was fine to see--the square was like a garden of richly
colored flowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing little suns
distributed over it.

Think of it--it was by command of that Italian loafer yonder on his
imperial throne in the Geneva prison that this splendid multitude was
assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the church
from a side street were there by his will. It is so strange, so
unrealizable.

At three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single file.
At three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some bishops;
then a number of archdeacons--all in striking colors that add to the
show. At three-ten a procession of priests passed along, with crucifix.
Another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at three-fifty
another one--very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered robes, and
much white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals, receding into
the distance.

A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. At
three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. Presently a long procession of
gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near
to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the
sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very
conspicuous where so much warm color is all about.

A waiting pause. At four-twelve the head of the funeral procession comes
into view at last. First, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to widen the
path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. Next,
three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with
cocked hats and white wigs. Next, troops in splendid uniforms, red,
gold, and white, exceedingly showy.

Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; there is a low
rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk
by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich
feathers; the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed.

The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves by;
first the Hungarian Guard in their indescribably brilliant and
picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric
splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array.

Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow,
and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three
dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in Austria were
capering about in the spacious vacancy. It was a day of contrasts.

Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first time was in 1854,
when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless pomp
and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and
decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting
and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last Wednesday, when she
entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the
dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls
again; but everywhere was a deep stillness, now--a stillness emphasized,
rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over
pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of gray-headed women
who had witnessed the first entry forty-four years before, when she and
they were young--and unaware!

A character in Baron von Berger's recent fairy drama "Habsburg" tells
about the first coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his history
draws a fine picture: I cannot make a close translation of it, but will
try to convey the spirit of the verses:

I saw the stately pageant pass:
In her high place I saw the Empress-Queen:
I could not take my eyes away
From that fair vision, spirit-like and pure,
That rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense
A noble Alp far lighted in the blue,
That in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud
And stands a dream of glory to the gaze
Of them that in the Valley toil and plod.





A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY

Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouri--a
village; time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France--a village; time,
the end of June, 1894. I was in the one village in that early time; I am
in the other now. These times and places are sufficiently wide apart,
yet today I have the strange sense of being thrust back into that
Missourian village and of reliving certain stirring days that I lived
there so long ago.

Last Saturday night the life of the President of the French Republic was
taken by an Italian assassin. Last night a mob surrounded our hotel,
shouting, howling, singing the "Marseillaise," and pelting our windows
with sticks and stones; for we have Italian waiters, and the mob demanded
that they be turned out of the house instantly--to be drubbed, and then
driven out of the village. Everybody in the hotel remained up until far
into the night, and experienced the several kinds of terror which one
reads about in books which tell of nigh attacks by Italians and by French
mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; the arrival, with rain of
stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to rearrange plans--followed
by a silence ominous, threatening, and harder to bear than even the
active siege and the noise. The landlord and the two village policemen
stood their ground, and at last the mob was persuaded to go away and
leave our Italians in peace. Today four of the ringleaders have been
sentenced to heavy punishment of a public sort--and are become local
heroes, by consequence.

That is the very mistake which was at first made in the Missourian
village half a century ago. The mistake was repeated and repeated--just
as France is doing in these later months.

In our village we had our Ravochals, our Henrys, our Vaillants; and in a
humble way our Cesario--I hope I have spelled this name wrong. Fifty
years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what France has been
passing through during the past two or three years, in the matter of
periodical frights, horrors, and shudderings.

In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. In that day, for a
man to speak out openly and proclaim himself an enemy of negro slavery
was simply to proclaim himself a madman. For he was blaspheming against
the holiest thing known to a Missourian, and could NOT be in his right
mind. For a man to proclaim himself an anarchist in France, three years
ago, was to proclaim himself a madman--he could not be in his right mind.

Now the original first blasphemer against any institution profoundly
venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers
and imitators may be humbugs and self-seekers, but he himself is
sincere--his heart is in his protest.

Robert Hardy was our first ABOLITIONIST--awful name! He was a journeyman
cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the great
pork-packing establishment which was Marion City's chief pride and sole
source of prosperity. He was a New-Englander, a stranger. And, being a
stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person--for that has
been human nature from Adam down--and of course, also, he was made to
feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other
animals. Hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to
reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to prefer the isolation
which had fallen to his lot. He was treated to many side remarks by his
fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was a
coward.

All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist--straight out and
publicly! He said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. For a
moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a
fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But the
Methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their hands.
He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible for his
words; that no man COULD be sane and utter such words.

So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking. He
was found to be good entertainment. Several nights running he made
abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and
laugh. He implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity
on the poor slaves, and take measurements for the restoration of their
stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers
of blood!

It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. A
slave came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back, and
was about to escape in a canoe to Illinois and freedom in the dull
twilight of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him.
Hardy happened along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a struggle,
and the constable did not come out of it alive. Hardly crossed the river
with the negro, and then came back to give himself up. All this took
time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook, like the Seine, the
Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide.
The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist preacher and the
sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest of order; so Hardy
was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed to the village
calaboose in spite of all the effort of the mob to get hold of him. The
reader will have begun to perceive that this Methodist minister was a
prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good headpiece.
Williams was his name--Damon Williams; Damon Williams in public,
Damnation Williams in private, because he was so powerful on that theme
and so frequent.

The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first man who had
ever been killed in the town. The event was by long odds the most
imposing in the town's history. It lifted the humble village into sudden
importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around.
And so was the name of Robert Hardy--Robert Hardy, the stranger, the
despised. In a day he was become the person of most consequence in the
region, the only person talked about. As to those other coopers, they
found their position curiously changed--they were important people, or
unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had been
their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two or three who had
really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves
objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their
shopmates.

The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. The new man
was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. He
issued an extra. Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole
paper to matters connected with the great event--there would be a full
and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait
of him. He was as good as his word. He carved the portrait himself, on
the back of a wooden type--and a terror it was to look at. It made a
great commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever
contained a picture. The village was very proud. The output of the
paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy
was sold.

When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from
Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and the court-house could
hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. The trial
was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying
pictures of the accused.

Hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake. People came from miles
around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women
and children, and made a picnic of the matter. It was the largest crowd
the village had ever seen. The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought
up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable
event.

Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. Within one week
afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves
abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been able to make a convert;
everybody laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. The four
swaggered around with their slouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and
hinted darkly at awful possibilities. The people were troubled and
afraid, and showed it. And they were stunned, too; they could not
understand it. "Abolitionist" had always been a term of shame and
horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to
bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men they
were, too--of good families, and brought up in the church. Ed Smith, the
printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been the head Sunday-school boy, and
had once recited three thousand Bible verses without making a break.
Dick Savage, twenty, the baker's apprentice; Will Joyce, twenty-two,
journeyman blacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twenty-four,
tobacco-stemmer--were the other three. They were all of a sentimental
cast; they were all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as it
was; they were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been
suspected of having anything bad in them.

They withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and
dreadful. They presently achieved the distinction of being denounced by
names from the pulpit--which made an immense stir! This was grandeur,
this was fame. They were envied by all the other young fellows now.
This was natural. Their company grew--grew alarmingly. They took a name.
It was a secret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly they were
simply the abolitionists. They had pass-words, grips, and signs; they
had secret meetings; their initiations were conducted with gloomy pomps
and ceremonies, at midnight.

They always spoke of Hardy as "the Martyr," and every little while they
moved through the principal street in procession--at midnight,
black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drum--on
pilgrimage to the Martyr's grave, where they went through with some
majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. They gave
previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned everybody
to keep indoors and darken all houses along the route, and leave the road
empty. These warnings were obeyed, for there was a skull and crossbones
at the top of the poster.

When this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite
natural thing happened. A few men of character and grit woke up out of
the nightmare of fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and
began to discharge scorn and scoffings at themselves and the community
for enduring this child's-play; and at the same time they proposed to end
it straightway. Everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into their
dead spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like men again.
This was on a Saturday. All day the new feeling grew and strengthened;
it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it. Midnight
saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with a clearly
defined and welcome piece of work in front of it. The best organizer and
strongest and bitterest talker on that great Saturday was the
Presbyterian clergyman who had denounced the original four from his
pulpit--Rev. Hiram Fletcher--and he promised to use his pulpit in the
public interest again now. On the morrow he had revelations to make, he
said--secrets of the dreadful society.