Mark Twains Speeches | Page 7

have lived in the

conviction that my performance of that time was coarse, vulgar, and
destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and your family found
humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the matter.
So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to delve among the Boston
papers of that bygone time and send me a copy of it.
It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am not able
to discover it. If it isn't innocently and ridiculously funny, I am no
judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two
from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C., of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing
but death terminates. The C.'s were very bright people and in every way
charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in
Venice and several months in Rome, afterward, and one day that
lamented break of mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point
of lathering those people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten
the memory of it almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C.'s
were indignant about the way that my performance had been received
in Boston. They poured out their opinions most freely and frankly
about the frosty attitude of the people who were present at that
performance, and about the Boston newspapers for the position they
had taken in regard to the matter. That position was that I had been
irreverent beyond belief, beyond imagination. Very well; I had
accepted that as a fact for a year or two, and had been thoroughly
miserable about it whenever I thought of it --which was not frequently,
if I could help it. Whenever I thought of it I wondered how I ever could
have been inspired to do so unholy a thing. Well, the C.'s comforted me,
but they did not persuade me to continue to think about the unhappy
episode. I resisted that. I tried to get it out of my mind, and let it die,
and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H.'s letter came, it had been a good
twenty-five years since I had thought of that matter; and when she said
that the thing was funny I wondered if possibly she might be right. At
any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and I wrote to Boston and got the
whole thing copied, as above set forth.
I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering--dimly I can
see a hundred people--no, perhaps fifty--shadowy figures sitting at

tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. I don't
know who they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand
table and facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave,
unsmiling; Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out
of his face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his
benignant face; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and
affection and all good- fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond
whose facets are being turned toward the light first one way and then
another--a charming man, and always fascinating, whether he was
talking or whether he was sitting still (what he would call still, but what
would be more or less motion to other people). I can see those figures
with entire distinctness across this abyss of time.
One other feature is clear--Willie Winter (for these past thousand years
dramatic editor of the New York Tribune, and still occupying that high
post in his old age) was there. He was much younger then than he is
now, and he showed 'it. It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie
Winter at a banquet. During a matter of twenty years I was seldom at a
banquet where Willie Winter was not also present, and where he did
not read a charming poem written for the occasion. He did it this time,
and it was up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good
to listen to as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring
unprepared out of heart and brain.
Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable
celebration of Mr. Whittier's seventieth birthday--because I got up at
that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed
would be the gem of the evening--the gay oration above quoted from
the Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had
perfectly memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and