What Is Man?

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


I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was
graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. She was
at that time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where
she stood, and how she looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her
bare head, her brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. She was
crying. What it was about I have long ago forgotten. But it was the
tears that preserved the picture for me, no doubt. She was a good child,
I can say that for her. She knew me nearly seventy years ago. Did she
forget me, in the course of time? I think not. If she had lived in
Stratford in Shakespeare's time, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For
he was never famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in
Stratford, and there wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he
had been dead a week.

"Injun Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines" were prominent and very
intemperate ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of
grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them.
Isn't it curious that two "town drunkards" and one half-breed loafer
should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a
hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in
the matter of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the
village where he had lived the half of his lifetime?