Chapters from My Autobiography | Page 6

DXCIX.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1906.
CHAPTERS

FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--II.
BY MARK TWAIN.
II.
My experiences as an author began early in 1867. I came to New York
from San Francisco in the first month of that year and presently Charles
H. Webb, whom I had known in San Francisco as a reporter on The
Bulletin, and afterward editor of The Californian, suggested that I
publish a volume of sketches. I had but a slender reputation to publish
it on, but I was charmed and excited by the suggestion and quite willing
to venture it if some industrious person would save me the trouble of
gathering the sketches together. I was loath to do it myself, for from the
beginning of my sojourn in this world there was a persistent vacancy in
me where the industry ought to be. ("Ought to was" is better, perhaps,
though the most of the authorities differ as to this.)
Webb said I had some reputation in the Atlantic States, but I knew
quite well that it must be of a very attenuated sort. What there was of it
rested upon the story of "The Jumping Frog." When Artemus Ward
passed through California on a lecturing tour, in 1865 or '66, I told him
the "Jumping Frog" story, in San Francisco, and he asked me to write it
out and send it to his publisher, Carleton, in New York, to be used in
padding out a small book which Artemus had prepared for the press
and which needed some more stuffing to make it big enough for the
price which was to be charged for it.
It reached Carleton in time, but he didn't think much of it, and was not
willing to go to the typesetting expense of adding it to the book. He did
not put it in the waste-basket, but made Henry Clapp a present of it, and
Clapp used it to help out the funeral of his dying literary journal, The
Saturday Press. "The Jumping Frog" appeared in the last number of
that paper, was the most joyous feature of the obsequies, and was at
once copied in the newspapers of America and England. It certainly
had a wide celebrity, and it still had it at the time that I am speaking
of--but I was aware that it was only the frog that was celebrated. It
wasn't I. I was still an obscurity.

Webb undertook to collate the sketches. He performed this office, then
handed the result to me, and I went to Carleton's establishment with it. I
approached a clerk and he bent eagerly over the counter to inquire into
my needs; but when he found that I had come to sell a book and not to
buy one, his temperature fell sixty degrees, and the old-gold
intrenchments in the roof of my mouth contracted three-quarters of an
inch and my teeth fell out. I meekly asked the privilege of a word with
Mr. Carleton, and was coldly informed that he was in his private office.
Discouragements and difficulties followed, but after a while I got by
the frontier and entered the holy of holies. Ah, now I remember how I
managed it! Webb had made an appointment for me with Carleton;
otherwise I never should have gotten over that frontier. Carleton rose
and said brusquely and aggressively,
"Well, what can I do for you?"
I reminded him that I was there by appointment to offer him my book
for publication. He began to swell, and went on swelling and swelling
and swelling until he had reached the dimensions of a god of about the
second or third degree. Then the fountains of his great deep were
broken up, and for two or three minutes I couldn't see him for the rain.
It was words, only words, but they fell so densely that they darkened
the atmosphere. Finally he made an imposing sweep with his right hand,
which comprehended the whole room and said,
"Books--look at those shelves! Every one of them is loaded with books
that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I
don't. Good morning."
Twenty-one years elapsed before I saw Carleton again. I was then
sojourning with my family at the Schweitzerhof, in Luzerne. He called
on me, shook hands cordially, and said at once, without any
preliminaries,
"I am substantially an obscure person, but I have at least one distinction
to my credit of such colossal dimensions that it entitles me to
immortality--to wit: I refused a book of yours, and for this I stand
without competitor as the prize ass of the nineteenth century."

It was a most handsome apology, and I told him so, and said it was a
long-delayed revenge but was sweeter to me than any other that could
be devised; that