Mark Twain, A Biography 1900-1907 | Page 7

boisterous cheering of the Stars
and Stripes right or wrong, but a patriotism that proposed to keep the
Stars and Stripes clean and worth shouting for. In an article, perhaps it
was a speech, begun at this time he wrote:
We teach the boys to atrophy their independence. We teach them to
take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd
without examining into the right or wrong of the matter-- exactly as
boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We

teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt,
such as do not shout with the crowd, & so here in our democracy we
are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it & out of
place--the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's
keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.
Howells tells of discussing these vital matters with him in "an upper
room, looking south over a quiet, open space of back yards where," he
says, "we fought our battles in behalf of the Filipinos and Boers, and he
carried on his campaign against the missionaries in China."
Howells at the time expressed an amused fear that Mark Twain's
countrymen, who in former years had expected him to be merely a
humorist, should now, in the light of his wider acceptance abroad,
demand that he be mainly serious.
But the American people were quite ready to accept him in any of his
phases, fully realizing that whatever his philosophy or doctrine it would
have somewhat of the humorous form, and whatever his humor, there
would somewhere be wisdom in it. He had in reality changed little; for
a generation he had thought the sort of things which he now, with
advanced years and a different audience, felt warranted in uttering
openly. The man who in '64 had written against corruption in San
Francisco, who a few years later had defended the emigrant Chinese
against persecution, who at the meetings of the Monday Evening Club
had denounced hypocrisy in politics, morals, and national issues, did
not need to change to be able to speak out against similar abuses now.
And a newer generation as willing to herald Mark Twain as a sage as
well as a humorist, and on occasion to quite overlook the absence of the
cap and bells.

CCXIII
MARK TWAIN--GENERAL SPOKESMAN
Clemens did not confine his speeches altogether to matters of reform.
At a dinner given by the Nineteenth Century Club in November, 1900,
he spoke on the "Disappearance of Literature," and at the close of the
discussion of that subject, referring to Milton and Scott, he said:
Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern
epics like "Paradise Lost." I guess he's right. He talked as if he was
pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would

suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you have ever
read "Paradise Lost," and you don't want to. That's something that you
just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester
says, and it meets his definition of a classic--something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of
literature. He said that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess that's
true. That fact of the business is you've got to be one of two ages to
appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and you
want to wait until you're ninety to read some of the rest. It takes a pretty
well-regulated abstemious critic to live ninety years.
But a few days later he was back again in the forefront of reform,
preaching at the Berkeley Lyceum against foreign occupation in China.
It was there that he declared himself a Boxer.
Why should not China be free from the foreigners, who are only
making trouble on her soil? If they would only all go home what a
pleasant place China would be for the Chinese! We do not allow
Chinamen to come here, and I say, in all seriousness, that it would be a
graceful thing to let China decide who shall go there.
China never wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted
Chinamen, and on this question I am with the Boxers every time. The
Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the
countries of other people. I wish him success. We drive the Chinaman
out of our country; the Boxer believes in driving us out of his country. I
am a Boxer, too, on those terms.
Introducing Winston Churchill, of England, at a dinner some weeks
later, he explained how generous England and America had