Mark Twain, A Biography 1900-1907 | Page 5

down that usually quiet street,
stopping to observe or point out where Mark Twain lived. There was a
constant procession of callers of every kind. Many were friends, old
and new, but there was a multitude of strangers. Hundreds came merely
to express their appreciation of his work, hoping for a personal word or
a hand-shake or an autograph; but there were other hundreds who came
with this thing and that thing--axes to grind--and there were newspaper
reporters to ask his opinion on politics, or polygamy, or woman's
suffrage; on heaven and hell and happiness; on the latest novel; on the
war in Africa, the troubles in China; on anything under the sun,
important or unimportant, interesting or inane, concerning which one
might possibly hold an opinion. He was unfailing "copy" if they could
but get a word with him. Anything that he might choose to say upon
any subject whatever was seized upon and magnified and printed with
head-lines. Sometimes opinions were invented for him. If he let fall a
few words they were multiplied into a column interview.
"That reporter worked a miracle equal to the loaves and fishes," he said
of one such performance.
Many men would have become annoyed and irritable as these things
continued; but Mark Twain was greater than that. Eventually he
employed a secretary to stand between him and the wash of the tide, as
a sort of breakwater; but he seldom lost his temper no matter what was
the request which was laid before him, for he recognized underneath it
the great tribute of a great nation.
Of course his literary valuation would be affected by the noise of the
general applause. Magazines and syndicates besought him for
manuscripts. He was offered fifty cents and even a dollar a word for
whatever he might give them. He felt a child-like gratification in these
evidences of his market advancement, but he was not demoralized by
them. He confined his work to a few magazines, and in November
concluded an arrangement with the new management of Harper &
Brothers, by which that firm was to have the exclusive serial privilege
of whatever he might write at a fixed rate of twenty cents per word--a
rate increased to thirty cents by a later contract, which also provided an
increased royalty for the publication of his books.
The United States, as a nation, does not confer any special honors upon
private citizens. We do not have decorations and titles, even though

there are times when it seems that such things might be not
inappropriately conferred. Certain of the newspapers, more lavish in
their enthusiasm than others, were inclined to propose, as one paper
phrased it, "Some peculiar recognition--something that should appeal to
Samuel L. Clemens, the man, rather than to Mark Twain, the literate.
Just what form this recognition should take is doubtful, for the case has
no exact precedent."
Perhaps the paper thought that Mark Twain was entitled--as he himself
once humorously suggested-to the "thanks of Congress" for having
come home alive and out of debt, but it is just as well that nothing of
the sort was ever seriously considered. The thanks of the public at large
contained more substance, and was a tribute much more to his mind.
The paper above quoted ended by suggesting a very large dinner and
memorial of welcome as being more in keeping with the republican
idea and the American expression of good-will.
But this was an unneeded suggestion. If he had eaten all the dinners
proposed he would not have lived to enjoy his public honors a month.
As it was, he accepted many more dinners than he could eat, and
presently fell into the habit of arriving when the banqueting was about
over and the after-dinner speaking about to begin. Even so the strain
told on him.
"His friends saw that he was wearing himself out," says Howells, and
perhaps this was true, for he grew thin and pale and contracted a
hacking cough. He did not spare himself as often as he should have
done. Once to Richard Watson Gilder he sent this line of regrets:
In bed with a chest cold and other company--Wednesday. DEAR
GILDER,--I can't. If I were a well man I could explain with this pencil,
but in the cir---ces I will leave it all to your imagination.
Was it Grady who killed himself trying to do all the dining and
speeching?
No, old man, no, no! Ever yours, MARK.
He became again the guest of honor at the Lotos Club, which had dined
him so lavishly seven years before, just previous to his financial
collapse. That former dinner had been a distinguished occasion, but
never before had the Lotos Club been so brimming with eager
hospitality as on the second great