Chapters from My Autobiography

Chapters from My
Autobiography, by Mark Twain

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Title: Chapters from My Autobiography
Author: Mark Twain
Release Date: December 1, 2006 [EBook #19987]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DXCVIII.

SEPTEMBER 7, 1906
CHAPTERS
FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--I.[1]
BY MARK TWAIN.
PREFATORY NOTE.--Mr. Clemens began to write his autobiography
many years ago, and he continues to add to it day by day. It was his
original intention to permit no publication of his memoirs until after his
death; but, after leaving "Pier No. 70," he concluded that a considerable
portion might now suitably be given to the public. It is that portion,
garnered from the quarter-million of words already written, which will
appear in this REVIEW during the coming year. No part of the
autobiography will be published in book form during the lifetime of the
author.--EDITOR N. A. R.
INTRODUCTION.
I intend that this autobiography shall become a model for all future
autobiographies when it is published, after my death, and I also intend
that it shall be read and admired a good many centuries because of its
form and method--a form and method whereby the past and the present
are constantly brought face to face, resulting in contrasts which newly
fire up the interest all along, like contact of flint with steel. Moreover,
this autobiography of mine does not select from my life its showy
episodes, but deals mainly in the common experiences which go to
make up the life of the average human being, because these episodes
are of a sort which he is familiar with in his own life, and in which he
sees his own life reflected and set down in print. The usual,
conventional autobiographer seems to particularly hunt out those
occasions in his career when he came into contact with celebrated
persons, whereas his contacts with the uncelebrated were just as
interesting to him, and would be to his reader, and were vastly more
numerous than his collisions with the famous.
Howells was here yesterday afternoon, and I told him the whole

scheme of this autobiography and its apparently systemless
system--only apparently systemless, for it is not really that. It is a
deliberate system, and the law of the system is that I shall talk about the
matter which for the moment interests me, and cast it aside and talk
about something else the moment its interest for me is exhausted. It is a
system which follows no charted course and is not going to follow any
such course. It is a system which is a complete and purposed jumble--a
course which begins nowhere, follows no specified route, and can
never reach an end while I am alive, for the reason that, if I should talk
to the stenographer two hours a day for a hundred years, I should still
never be able to set down a tenth part of the things which have
interested me in my lifetime. I told Howells that this autobiography of
mine would live a couple of thousand years, without any effort, and
would then take a fresh start and live the rest of the time.
He said he believed it would, and asked me if I meant to make a library
of it.
I said that that was my design; but that, if I should live long enough, the
set of volumes could not be contained merely in a city, it would require
a State, and that there would not be any multi-billionaire alive, perhaps,
at any time during its existence who would be able to buy a full set,
except on the instalment plan.
Howells applauded, and was full of praises and endorsement, which
was wise in him and judicious. If he had manifested a different spirit, I
would have thrown him out of the window. I like criticism, but it must
be my way.
I.
Back of the Virginia Clemenses is a dim procession of ancestors
stretching back to Noah's time. According to tradition, some of them
were pirates and slavers in Elizabeth's time. But this is no discredit to
them, for so were Drake and Hawkins and the others. It was a
respectable trade, then, and monarchs were partners in it. In my time I
have had desires to be a pirate myself. The reader--if