Mark Twain, A Biography 1900-1907 | Page 9

this secret has been revealed.
Until now no one outside the family has known the facts. But there they
stand: Watterson saved the Union. Yet to this day that man gets no
pension. Those were great days, splendid days. What an uprising it was!
For the hearts of the whole nation, North and South, were in the war.
We of the South were not ashamed; for, like the men of the North, we
were fighting for 'flags we loved; and when men fight for these things,
and under these convictions, with nothing sordid to tarnish their cause,
that cause is holy, the blood spilt for it is sacred, the life that is laid
down for it is consecrated. To-day we no longer regret the result, to-day
we are glad it came out as it did, but we are not ashamed that we did
our endeavor; we did our bravest best, against despairing odds, for the
cause which was precious to us and which our consciences approved;
and we are proud--and you are proud--the kindred blood in your veins

answers when I say it--you are proud of the record we made in those
mighty collisions in the fields.
What an uprising it was! We did not have to supplicate for soldiers on
either side. "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
strong!" That was the music North and South. The very choicest young
blood and brawn and brain rose up from Maine to the Gulf and flocked
to the standards--just as men always do when in their eyes their cause is
great and fine and their hearts are in it; just as men flocked to the
Crusades, sacrificing all they possessed to the cause, and entering
cheerfully upon hardships which we cannot even imagine in this age,
and upon toilsome and wasting journeys which in our time would be
the equivalent of circumnavigating the globe five times over.
North and South we put our hearts into that colossal struggle, and out
of it came the blessed fulfilment of the prophecy of the immortal
Gettysburg speech which said: "We here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a
new birth of freedom; and that a government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
We are here to honor the birthday of the greatest citizen, and the
noblest and the best, after Washington, that this land or any other has
yet produced. The old wounds are healed, you and we are brothers
again; you testify it by honoring two of us, once soldiers of the Lost
Cause, and foes of your great and good leader--with the privilege of
assisting here; and we testify it by laying our honest homage at the feet
of Abraham Lincoln, and in forgetting that you of the North and we of
the South were ever enemies, and remembering only that we are now
indistinguishably fused together and nameable by one common great
name--Americans!

CCXIV
MARK TWAIN AND THE MISSIONARIES
Mark Twain had really begun his crusade for reform soon after his
arrival in America in a practical hand-to-hand manner. His housekeeper,
Katie Leary, one night employed a cabman to drive her from the Grand
Central Station to the house at 14 West Tenth Street. No contract had
been made as to price, and when she arrived there the cabman's
extortionate charge was refused. He persisted in it, and she sent into the

house for her employer. Of all men, Mark Twain was the last one to
countenance an extortion. He reasoned with the man kindly enough at
first; when the driver at last became abusive Clemens demanded his
number, which was at first refused. In the end he paid the legal fare,
and in the morning entered a formal complaint, something altogether
unexpected, for the American public is accustomed to suffering almost
any sort of imposition to avoid trouble and publicity.
In some notes which Clemens had made in London four years earlier he
wrote:
If you call a policeman to settle the dispute you can depend on one
thing--he will decide it against you every time. And so will the New
York policeman. In London if you carry your case into court the man
that is entitled to win it will win it. In New York--but no one carries a
cab case into court there. It is my impression that it is now more than
thirty years since any one has carried a cab case into court there.
Nevertheless, he was promptly on hand when the case was called to
sustain the charge and to read the cabdrivers' union and the public in
general a lesson in good-citizenship. At the end of the hearing, to a
representative of