Mark Twain, A Biography 1866-1875 | Page 8

many times; but if I should see Denis McCarthy and Steve
Gillis mounting the scaffold to-morrow, and I could save them by
turning over my hand, I wouldn't do it!'
"He canceled the lecture engagement, however, next morning, and the
day after left on the Pioneer Stage, by the way of Donner Lake, for
California. The boys came rather sheepishly to see him off; but he
would make no show of relenting. When they introduced themselves as
Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, etc., he merely said:
"'Yes, and you'll all be behind the bars some day. There's been a good
deal of robbery around here lately, and it's pretty clear now who did it.'
They handed him a package containing the masks which the robbers

had worn. He received it in gloomy silence; but as the stage drove away
he put his head out of the window, and after some pretty vigorous
admonition resumed his old smile, and called out: 'Good-by, friends;
good-by, thieves; I bear you no malice.' So the heaviest joke was on his
tormentors after all."
This is the story of the famous Mark Twain robbery direct from
headquarters. It has been garbled in so many ways that it seems worth
setting down in full. Denis McCarthy, who joined him presently in San
Francisco, received a little more punishment there.
"What kind of a trip did you boys have?" a friend asked of them.
Clemens, just recovering from a cold which the exposure on the Divide
had given him, smiled grimly:
"Oh, pretty good, only Denis here mistook it for a spree."
He lectured again in San Francisco, this time telling the story of his
Overland trip in 1861, and he did the daring thing of repeating three
times the worn-out story of Horace Greeley's ride with Hank Monk, as
given later in 'Roughing It'. People were deadly tired of that story out
there, and when he told it the first time, with great seriousness, they
thought he must be failing mentally. They did not laugh--they only felt
sorry. He waited a little, as if expecting a laugh, and presently led
around to it and told it again. The audience was astonished still more,
and pitied him thoroughly. He seemed to be waiting pathetically in the
dead silence for their applause, then went on with his lecture; but
presently, with labored effort, struggled around to the old story again,
and told it for the third time. The audience suddenly saw the joke then,
and became vociferous and hysterical in their applause; but it was a
narrow escape. He would have been hysterical himself if the relief had
not came when it did.
--[A side-light on the Horace Greeley story and on Mr. Greeley's
eccentricities is furnished by Mr. Goodman:
When I was going East in 1869 I happened to see Hank Monk just
before I started. "Mr. Goodman," he said, "you tell Horace Greeley that
I want to come East, and ask him to send me a pass." "All right, Hank,"
I said, "I will." It happened that when I got to New York City one of
the first men I met was Greeley. "Mr. Greeley," said, "I have a message
for you from Hank Monk." Greeley bristled and glared at me.
"That--rascal?" he said, "He has done me more injury than any other

man in America."]

LVI
BACK TO THE STATES
In the mean time Clemens had completed his plan for sailing, and had
arranged with General McComb, of the Alta California, for letters
during his proposed trip around the world. However, he meant to visit
his people first, and his old home. He could go back with means now,
and with the prestige of success.
"I sail to-morrow per Opposition--telegraphed you to-day," he wrote on
December 14th, and a day later his note-book entry says:
Sailed from San Francisco in Opposition (line) steamer America, Capt.
Wakeman, at noon, 15th Dec., 1866. Pleasant sunny day, hills brightly
clad with green grass and shrubbery.
So he was really going home at last! He had been gone five and a half
years--eventful, adventurous years that had made him over completely,
at least so far as ambitions and equipment were concerned. He had
came away, in his early manhood, a printer and a pilot, unknown
outside of his class. He was returning a man of thirty-one, with a fund
of hard experience, three added professions--mining, journalism, and
lecturing-- also with a new name, already famous on the sunset slopes
of its adoption, and beginning to be heard over the hills and far away.
In some degree, at least, he resembled the prince of a fairy tale who,
starting out humble and unnoticed, wins his way through a hundred
adventures and returns with gifts and honors.
The homeward voyage was a notable one.