What Is Man?

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


But the revelations were never made. At half past two in the morning the
dead silence of the village was broken by a crashing explosion, and the
town patrol saw the preacher's house spring in a wreck of whirling
fragments into the sky. The preacher was killed, together with a negro
woman, his only slave and servant.

The town was paralyzed again, and with reason. To struggle against a
visible enemy is a thing worth while, and there is a plenty of men who
stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible
one--an invisible one who sneaks in and does his awful work in the dark
and leaves no trace--that is another matter. That is a thing to make the
bravest tremble and hold back.

The cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. The man who was to
have had a packed church to hear him expose and denounce the common enemy
had but a handful to see him buried. The coroner's jury had brought in a
verdict of "death by the visitation of God," for no witness came forward;
if any existed they prudently kept out of the way. Nobody seemed sorry.
Nobody wanted to see the terrible secret society provoked into the
commission of further outrages. Everybody wanted the tragedy hushed up,
ignored, forgotten, if possible.

And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when Will Joyce,
the blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the
assassin! Plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. He made
his proclamation, and stuck to it. Stuck to it, and insisted upon a
trial. Here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly
formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could not
hope to deal with successfully--VANITY, thirst for notoriety. If men
were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of
newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible
invention of man could discourage or deter them? The town was in a sort
of panic; it did not know what to do.

However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter--it had no choice.
It brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the county
court. The trial was a fine sensation. The prisoner was the principal
witness for the prosecution. He gave a full account of the
assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he
deposited his keg of powder and laid his train--from the house to
such-and-such a spot; how George Ronalds and Henry Hart came along just
then, smoking, and he borrowed Hart's cigar and fired the train with it,
shouting, "Down with all slave-tyrants!" and how Hart and Ronalds made no
effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forward to
testify yet.

But they had to testify now, and they did--and pitiful it was to see how
reluctant they were, and how scared. The crowded house listened to
Joyce's fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a
deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding,
with a roaring repetition of his "Death to all slave-tyrants!"--which
came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present
catch his breath and gasp.

The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait, with
other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond
imagination.

The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. It drew a vast
crowd. Good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a
dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity.
Joyce recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the
scaffold which had imposing passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and
gave him a reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later, in
the society's records, of the "Martyr Orator." He went to his death
breathing slaughter and charging his society to "avenge his murder." If
he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty of young fellows
present in that great crowd he was a grand hero--and enviably situated.

He was hanged. It was a mistake. Within a month from his death the
society which he had honored had twenty new members, some of them
earnest, determined men. They did not court distinction in the same way,
but they celebrated his martyrdom. The crime which had been obscure and
despised had become lofty and glorified.

Such things were happening all over the country. Wild-brained martyrdom
was succeeded by uprising and organization. Then, in natural order,
followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It
was bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. It has been
the manner of reform since the beginning of the world.





SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY

Interlaken, Switzerland, 1891.

It is a good many years since I was in Switzerland last. In that remote
time there was only one ladder railway in the country. That state of
things is all changed. There isn't a mountain in Switzerland now that
hasn't a ladder railroad or two up its back like suspenders; indeed, some
mountains are latticed with them, and two years hence all will be. In
that day the peasant of the high altitudes will have to carry a lantern
when he goes visiting in the night to keep from stumbling over railroads
that have been built since his last round. And also in that day, if
there shall remain a high-altitude peasant whose potato-patch hasn't a
railroad through it, it would make him as conspicuous as William Tell.

However, there are only two best ways to travel through Switzerland. The
first best is afloat. The second best is by open two-horse carriage.
One can come from Lucerne to Interlaken over the Brunig by ladder
railroad in an hour or so now, but you can glide smoothly in a carriage
in ten, and have two hours for luncheon at noon--for luncheon, not for
rest. There is no fatigue connected with the trip. One arrives fresh in
spirit and in person in the evening--no fret in his heart, no grime on
his face, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye. This is the
right condition of mind and body, the right and due preparation for the
solemn event which closed the day--stepping with metaphorically uncovered
head into the presence of the most impressive mountain mass that the
globe can show--the Jungfrau. The stranger's first feeling, when suddenly
confronted by that towering and awful apparition wrapped in its shroud of
snow, is breath-taking astonishment. It is as if heaven's gates had
swung open and exposed the throne.

It is peaceful here and pleasant at Interlaken. Nothing going on--at
least nothing but brilliant life-giving sunshine. There are floods and
floods of that. One may properly speak of it as "going on," for it is
full of the suggestion of activity; the light pours down with energy,
with visible enthusiasm. This is a good atmosphere to be in, morally as
well as physically. After trying the political atmosphere of the
neighboring monarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe air that
has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come among a
people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to be taught
in all schools and studied by all races and peoples. For the struggle
here throughout the centuries has not been in the interest of any private
family, or any church, but in the interest of the whole body of the
nation, and for shelter and protection of all forms of belief. This fact
is colossal. If one would realize how colossal it is, and of what
dignity and majesty, let him contrast it with the purposes and objects of
the Crusades, the siege of York, the War of the Roses, and other historic
comedies of that sort and size.

Last week I was beating around the Lake of Four Cantons, and I saw Rutli
and Altorf. Rutli is a remote little patch of meadow, but I do not know
how any piece of ground could be holier or better worth crossing oceans
and continents to see, since it was there that the great trinity of
Switzerland joined hands six centuries ago and swore the oath which set
their enslaved and insulted country forever free; and Altorf is also
honorable ground and worshipful, since it was there that William,
surnamed Tell (which interpreted means "The foolish talker"--that is to
say, the too-daring talker), refused to bow to Gessler's hat. Of late
years the prying student of history has been delighting himself beyond
measure over a wonderful find which he has made--to wit, that Tell did
not shoot the apple from his son's head. To hear the students jubilate,
one would suppose that the question of whether Tell shot the apple or
didn't was an important matter; whereas it ranks in importance exactly
with the question of whether Washington chopped down the cherry-tree or
didn't. The deeds of Washington, the patriot, are the essential thing;
the cherry-tree incident is of no consequence. To prove that Tell did
shoot the apple from his son's head would merely prove that he had better
nerve than most men and was skillful with a bow as a million others who
preceded and followed him, but not one whit more so. But Tell was more
and better than a mere marksman, more and better than a mere cool head;
he was a type; he stands for Swiss patriotism; in his person was
represented a whole people; his spirit was their spirit--the spirit which
would bow to none but God, the spirit which said this in words and
confirmed it with deeds. There have always been Tells in
Switzerland--people who would not bow. There was a sufficiency of them
at Rutli; there were plenty of them at Murten; plenty at Grandson; there
are plenty today. And the first of them all--the very first, earliest
banner-bearer of human freedom in this world--was not a man, but a
woman--Stauffacher's wife. There she looms dim and great, through the
haze of the centuries, delivering into her husband's ear that gospel of
revolt which was to bear fruit in the conspiracy of Rutli and the birth
of the first free government the world had ever seen.

From this Victoria Hotel one looks straight across a flat of trifling
width to a lofty mountain barrier, which has a gateway in it shaped like
an inverted pyramid. Beyond this gateway arises the vast bulk of the
Jungfrau, a spotless mass of gleaming snow, into the sky. The gateway,
in the dark-colored barrier, makes a strong frame for the great picture.
The somber frame and the glowing snow-pile are startlingly contrasted.
It is this frame which concentrates and emphasizes the glory of the
Jungfrau and makes it the most engaging and beguiling and fascinating
spectacle that exists on the earth. There are many mountains of snow
that are as lofty as the Jungfrau and as nobly proportioned, but they
lack the fame. They stand at large; they are intruded upon and elbowed
by neighboring domes and summits, and their grandeur is diminished and
fails of effect.

It is a good name, Jungfrau--Virgin. Nothing could be whiter; nothing
could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect. At six yesterday
evening the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish haze
seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so
shimmering where the wandering lights touched it and so dim where the
shadows lay. Apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the imagination,
nothing real about it. The tint was green, slightly varying shades of
it, but mainly very dark. The sun was down--as far as that barrier was
concerned, but not for the Jungfrau, towering into the heavens beyond the
gateway. She was a roaring conflagration of blinding white.

It is said the Fridolin (the old Fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a
missionary, gave the mountain its gracious name. He was an Irishman, son
of an Irish king--there were thirty thousand kings reigning in County
Cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. It got so that they
could not make a living, there was so much competition and wages got cut
so. Some of them were out of work months at a time, with wife and little
children to feed, and not a crust in the place. At last a particularly
severe winter fell upon the country, and hundreds of them were reduced to
mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in the bitterest weather,
standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their crowns for alms.
Indeed, they would have been obliged to emigrate or starve but for a
fortunate idea of Prince Fridolin's, who started a labor-union, the first
one in history, and got the great bulk of them to join it. He thus won
the general gratitude, and they wanted to make him emperor--emperor over
them all--emperor of County Cork, but he said, No, walking delegate was
good enough for him. For behold! he was modest beyond his years, and
keen as a whip. To this day in Germany and Switzerland, where St.
Fridolin is revered and honored, the peasantry speak of him
affectionately as the first walking delegate.

The first walk he took was into France and Germany, missionarying--for
missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All
you had to do was to cure the savage's sick daughter by a "miracle"--a
miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance--and
immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes
with a new convert's enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself
easy, now. He would take an ax and convert the rest of the nation
himself. Charlemagne was that kind of a walking delegate.

Yes, there were great missionaries in those days, for the methods were
sure and the rewards great. We have no such missionaries now, and no
such methods.

But to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are
interested. I am interested myself because I have seen his relics in
Sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miracle--the
one which won him his sainthood in the papal court a few centuries later.
To have seen these things makes me feel very near to him, almost like a
member of the family, in fact. While wandering about the Continent he
arrived at the spot on the Rhine which is now occupied by Sackingen, and
proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off. He appealed to
the king of the Franks, who made him a present of the whole region,
people and all. He built a great cloister there for women and proceeded
to teach in it and accumulate more land. There were two wealthy brothers
in the neighborhood, Urso and Landulph. Urso died and Fridolin claimed
his estates. Landulph asked for documents and papers. Fridolin had none
to show. He said the bequest had been made to him by word of mouth.
Landulph suggested that he produce a witness and said it in a way which
he thought was very witty, very sarcastic. This shows that he did not
know the walking delegate. Fridolin was not disturbed. He said:

"Appoint your court. I will bring a witness."

The court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and barons. A day was
appointed for the trial of the case. On that day the judges took their
seats in state, and proclamation was made that the court was ready for
business. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and yet no
Fridolin appeared. Landulph rose, and was in the act of claiming judgment
by default when a strange clacking sound was heard coming up the stairs.
In another moment Fridolin entered at the door and came walking in a deep
hush down the middle aisle, with a tall skeleton stalking in his rear.

Amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody suspected
that the skeleton was Urso's. It stopped before the chief judge and
raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak, while all the assembled
shuddered, for they could see the words leak out between its ribs. It
said:

"Brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold by robbery
the gift which I gave thee for the honor of God?"

It seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict was actually
given against Landulph on the testimony of this wandering rack-heap of
unidentified bones. In our day a skeleton would not be allowed to
testify at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility, and its word
could not be believed on oath, and this was probably one of them.
However, the incident is valuable as preserving to us a curious sample of
the quaint laws of evidence of that remote time--a time so remote, so far
back toward the beginning of original idiocy, that the difference between
a bench of judges and a basket of vegetables was as yet so slight that we
may say with all confidence that it didn't really exist.

During several afternoons I have been engaged in an interesting, maybe
useful, piece of work--that is to say, I have been trying to make the
mighty Jungfrau earn her living--earn it in a most humble sphere, but on
a prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn't
do anything in a small way with her size and style. I have been trying
to make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as
they glide along her pallid face up there against the sky, and tell the
time of day to the populations lying within fifty miles of her and to the
people in the moon, if they have a good telescope there.

Until late in the afternoon the Jungfrau's aspect is that of a spotless
desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. But by mid-afternoon some
elevations which rise out of the western border of the desert, whose
presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to that time, began
to cast black shadows eastward across the gleaming surface. At first
there is only one shadow; later there are two. Toward 4 P.M. the other
day I was gazing and worshiping as usual when I chanced to notice that
shadow No. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the shape of the
human profile. By four the back of the head was good, the military cap
was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip sharp, but
not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot straight aggressively
forward from the chin.

At four-thirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the
altered slant of the sun had revealed and made conspicuous a huge
buttress or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer very
well for a shoulder or coat-collar to this swarthy and indiscreet
sweetheart who had stolen out there right before everybody to pillow his
head on the Virgin's white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities to
her in the sensuous music of the crashing ice-domes and the boom and
thunder of the passing avalanche--music very familiar to his ear, for he
had heard it every afternoon at this hour since the day he first came
courting this child of the earth, who lives in the sky, and that day is
far, yes--for he was at this pleasant sport before the Middle Ages
drifted by him in the valley; before the Romans marched past, and before
the antique and recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and wondered
who he might be, and were probably afraid of him; and before primeval man
himself, just emerged from his four-footed estate, stepped out upon this
plain, first sample of his race, a thousand centuries ago, and cast a
glad eye up there, judging he had found a brother human being and
consequently something to kill; and before the big saurians wallowed
here, still some eons earlier. Oh yes, a day so far back that the
eternal son was present to see that first visit; a day so far back that
neither tradition nor history was born yet and a whole weary eternity
must come and go before the restless little creature, of whose face this
stupendous Shadow Face was the prophecy, would arrive in the earth and
begin his shabby career and think of a big thing. Oh, indeed yes; when
you talk about your poor Roman and Egyptian day-before-yesterday
antiquities, you should choose a time when the hoary Shadow Face of the
Jungfrau is not by. It antedates all antiquities known or imaginable;
for it was here the world itself created the theater of future
antiquities. And it is the only witness with a human face that was there
to see the marvel, and remains to us a memorial of it.

By 4:40 P.M. the nose of the shadow is perfect and is beautiful. It is
black and is powerfully marked against the upright canvas of glowing
snow, and covers hundreds of acres of that resplendent surface.

Meantime shadow No. 2 has been creeping out well to the rear of the face
west of it--and at five o'clock has assumed a shape that has rather a
poor and rude semblance of a shoe.

Meantime, also, the great Shadow Face has been gradually changing for
twenty minutes, and now, 5 P.M., it is becoming a quite fair portrait of
Roscoe Conkling. The likeness is there, and is unmistakable. The goatee
is shortened, now, and has an end; formerly it hadn't any, but ran off
eastward and arrived nowhere.

By 6 P.M. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee has become what
looks like the shadow of a tower with a pointed roof, and the shoe had
turned into what the printers call a "fist" with a finger pointing.

If I were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred miles northward
of this point, and was denied a timepiece, I could get along well enough
from four till six on clear days, for I could keep trace of the time by
the changing shapes of these mighty shadows of the Virgin's front, the
most stupendous dial I am acquainted with, the oldest clock in the world
by a couple of million years.

I suppose I should not have noticed the forms of the shadows if I hadn't
the habit of hunting for faces in the clouds and in mountain crags--a
sort of amusement which is very entertaining even when you don't find
any, and brilliantly satisfying when you do. I have searched through
several bushels of photographs of the Jungfrau here, but found only one
with the Face in it, and in this case it was not strictly recognizable as
a face, which was evidence that the picture was taken before four o'clock
in the afternoon, and also evidence that all the photographers have
persistently overlooked one of the most fascinating features of the
Jungfrau show. I say fascinating, because if you once detect a human
face produced on a great plan by unconscious nature, you never get tired
of watching it. At first you can't make another person see it at all,
but after he has made it out once he can't see anything else afterward.

The King of Greece is a man who goes around quietly enough when off
duty. One day this summer he was traveling in an ordinary first-class
compartment, just in his other suit, the one which he works the realm in
when he is at home, and so he was not looking like anybody in particular,
but a good deal like everybody in general. By and by a hearty and
healthy German-American got in and opened up a frank and interesting and
sympathetic conversation with him, and asked him a couple of thousand
questions about himself, which the king answered good-naturedly, but in a
more or less indefinite way as to private particulars.

"Where do you live when you are at home?"

"In Greece."

"Greece! Well, now, that is just astonishing! Born there?"

"No."

"Do you speak Greek?"

"Yes."

"Now, ain't that strange! I never expected to live to see that. What is
your trade? I mean how do you get your living? What is your line of
business?"

"Well, I hardly know how to answer. I am only a kind of foreman, on a
salary; and the business--well, is a very general kind of business."

"Yes, I understand--general jobbing--little of everything--anything that
there's money in."

"That's about it, yes."

"Are you traveling for the house now?"

"Well, partly; but not entirely. Of course I do a stroke of business if
it falls in the way--"

"Good! I like that in you! That's me every time. Go on."

"I was only going to say I am off on my vacation now."

"Well that's all right. No harm in that. A man works all the better for
a little let-up now and then. Not that I've been used to having it
myself; for I haven't. I reckon this is my first. I was born in
Germany, and when I was a couple of weeks old shipped to America, and
I've been there ever since, and that's sixty-four years by the watch.
I'm an American in principle and a German at heart, and it's the boss
combination. Well, how do you get along, as a rule--pretty fair?"

"I've a rather large family--"

"There, that's it--big family and trying to raise them on a salary. Now,
what did you go to do that for?"

"Well, I thought--"

"Of course you did. You were young and confident and thought you could
branch out and make things go with a whirl, and here you are, you see!
But never mind about that. I'm not trying to discourage you. Dear me!
I've been just where you are myself! You've got good grit; there's good
stuff in you, I can see that. You got a wrong start, that's the whole
trouble. But you hold your grip, and we'll see what can be done. Your
case ain't half as bad as it might be. You are going to come out all
right--I'm bail for that. Boys and girls?"

"My family? Yes, some of them are boys--"