What Is Man?

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


Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected
health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this. Day
before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and
strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously ill.
Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the Associated Press.
I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said I
must think of Clara. Clara would see the report in the German papers,
and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four months [2]
and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous. There was
reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the
Associated Press denying the "charge" that I was "dying," and saying "I
would not do such a thing at my time of life."

Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter
so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing
serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's
irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both appear in this
evening's papers?--the one so blithe, the other so tragic?

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable
mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in
Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich!
Seven months ago Mr. Roger died--one of the best friends I ever had, and
the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race;
within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan--old, old
friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under
our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was
forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit
here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How
dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a
mockery.

Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old
yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?

I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as
her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago.
The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.

I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again;
that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I
have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and
bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been
released, but I shall not follow.

Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was
at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next
evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called
"Mark Twain." We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and
she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas
preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning, and then
her little French friend would arrive from New York--the surprise would
follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. While she was
out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia floor was clothed
with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted
surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched
with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal
profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today.
What desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise
from that place? Not mine, surely. All these little matters have
happened in the last four days. "Little." Yes--THEN. But not now.
Nothing she said or thought or did is little now. And all the lavish
humor!--what is become of it? It is pathos, now. Pathos, and the
thought of it brings tears.

All these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she lies
yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.
Strange--marvelous--incredible! I have had this experience before; but
it would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed's head
without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me
good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without
formalities.

And so--

I have been to Jean's parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for
servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
floor--everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many a
year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I
used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and
look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now
here is Jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The
presents are not labeled--the hands are forever idle that would have
labeled them today. Jean's mother always worked herself down with her
Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding
days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the
convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for
months.

Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly is danger of
overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half
past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the
letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the
others to the stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and then
mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and her
poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards with me
after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went early to
bed.

Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising while
absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a housekeeper;
also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr. Paine's hands.

No--she wasn't willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter
ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn't audit the
bills and let Paine fill out the checks--she would continue to attend to
that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let Katy
assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal
friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it by that
name, though I was not able to see where my formidable change had been
made.

However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was proud
of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to give up
any part of her share in that unlovely work.

In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that
if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get
blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was
urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip
until March she would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon
that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by
tomorrow's ship and secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to
write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now.

For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.

Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the sky-line
of the hills.

I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer
to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these last nine
months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to us
three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums, many
miles from us. How eloquent glad and grateful she was to cross her
father's threshold again!

Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word
would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would
have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt,
and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched
with the most precious of all gifts--that gift which makes all other
gifts mean and poor--death. I have never wanted any released friend of
mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when
Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers. When Clara
met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had died
suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of fortune
--fortunate all his long and lovely life--fortunate to his latest moment!
The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. True--but they
were for ME, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All the fortunes he
had ever made before were poverty compared with this one.

Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast
emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of
the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of the
family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would
never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have
entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but
to me it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the
spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome
me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and
Charles Dudley Warner. How good and kind they were, and how lovable
their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could call the
children back and hear them romp again with George--that peerless black
ex-slave and children's idol who came one day--a flitting stranger--to
wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. Until he died. Clara and Jean
would never enter again the New York hotel which their mother had
frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I shall stay in
this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's
spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely and tragic
death--but I will not think of that now.

Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping,
and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was
her very own child--she wore herself out present-hunting in New York
these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of
names--fifty, he thinks--people to whom she sent presents last night.
Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of bank-notes,
for the servants.

Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and
forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany.
He has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in
Germany, and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders
save in that tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor
at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no
German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean
wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was
ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog will
not be neglected.

There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From her childhood up she
always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind or
another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent
her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad and
grateful to say.

She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,
beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritance from me. She knew
all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of
various humane societies when she was still a little girl--both here and
abroad--and she remained an active member to the last. She founded two
or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.

She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out
of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters
deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that
kindly error.

She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but an
indifferent ear music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy
facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get rusty
through neglect.

The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as
they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child's mother
laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but they take
away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and parted at my
door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the
telegraph would be bringing words like these:

"From the bottom of our hearts we send out sympathy, dearest of friends."

For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,
remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the
number of them?

She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her malady--epilepsy.
There are no words to express how grateful I am that she did not meet her
fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own
home.

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

It is true. Jean is dead.

A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines
yet to appear, and now I am writing--this.

CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.--Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals,
and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the
cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long
ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so
many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this
one--Jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this one.
And last night I saw again what I had seen then--that strange and lovely
miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the
gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care,
and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of
the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and worshipped
it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.

About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep
silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense
that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be
sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came upon
Jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not spring to
greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and
sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment
since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so. Always when
Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the
house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor was
his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the ground floor he always
followed me about, and when I went upstairs he went too--in a tumultuous
gallop. But now it was different: after patting him a little I went to
the library--he remained behind; when I went upstairs he did not follow
me, save with his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyes--big, and kind,
and eloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful creature, and is
of the breed of the New York police-dogs. I do not like dogs, because
they bark when there is no occasion for it; but I have liked this one
from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and because he never
barks except when there is occasion--which is not oftener than twice a
week.

In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of
my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home
from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I
only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will
keep them. Her hand has touched them--it is an accolade--they are noble,
now.

And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing I have often
wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn't see it for the tears. She
will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the
mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old
kind words she loved so well, "Merry Christmas to Jean!" If she could
only have lived one day longer!

At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to one
of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could
spare--and more, most likely.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT.--This afternoon they took her away from her room. As
soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her
coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at
the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's
chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it
was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God
upon it.

They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited,
and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle,
and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went
his way as silently as he had come. HE KNOWS.

At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it--that Jean could not
see it! She so loved the snow.

The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the
door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine
began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's "Impromptu," which was
Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then
he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my
request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo
and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in
their last hours in this life.

From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road
and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently
disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any
more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies
together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to her distant
childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in the
company of Susy and Langdon.

DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning.
He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
hereafter.

The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives
across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and Jean not here
to see.

2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four
hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The
scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where
her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where
Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five
years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.

FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over.

When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I
could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said WE would be a family. We
said we would be close comrades and happy--just we two. That fair dream
was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my
mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were
together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true,
contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.

And now? Now Jean is in her grave!

In the grave--if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!

----- 1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family
for twenty-nine years.

2. Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.







THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE

I

If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us to write upon
the above text. It means the change in my life's course which introduced
what must be regarded by me as the most IMPORTANT condition of my career.
But it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that turning-point
ITSELF was the creator of the new condition. This gives it too much
distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the LAST
link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the
cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its
ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed
share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all
necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the
scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result. It know we have a fashion of
saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we
shouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in
the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real importance it has
no advantage over any one of its predecessors.

Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:

Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on
the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "We may still
retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to
fight it out in arms."

This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big
and little, of Caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by
stage, link by link. This was the LAST link--merely the last one, and no
bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating
mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune.

You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, and so have I; so
has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
his decision.

While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with
it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other
side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of the
gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. THE DIE IS CAST."

So he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar's life-chain, too; and a
necessary one. We don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he
was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was
there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast
that was to make up Caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the
aisles of history forever.

If the stranger hadn't been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed.
With such results! Such vast events--each a link in the HUMAN RACE'S
life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one,
and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire;
the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins;
the spread of the religion to other lands--and so on; link by link took
its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America being
one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English and other
immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them)
another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which resulted in
ME. For I was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the
Rubicon. If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which
he COULDN'T, for he was the appointed link) Caesar would not have
crossed. What would have happened, in that case, we can never guess. We
only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. They
might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but
their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that
interests me personally is that I would not be HERE now, but somewhere
else; and probably black--there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he
crossed. And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared
anything about it before.



II

To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I
have been professionally literary something more than forty years. There
have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the link
in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most
CONSPICUOUS link in that chain. BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not
any more important than its predecessors. All the other links have an
inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors in
making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of the
Rubicon included.