Mark Twains Speeches | Page 9

next man hadn't
strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied,
paralyzed; it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try.
Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells mournfully,
and without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and supported us
out of the room. It was very kind--he was most generous. He towed us
tottering away into same room in that building, and we sat down there.
I don't know what my remark was now, but I know the nature of it. It
was the kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the
world can help your case. But Howells was honest--he had to say the
heart-breaking things he did say: that there was no help for this
calamity, this shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most
disastrous thing that had ever happened in anybody's history--and then
he added, "That is, for you--and consider what you have done for
Bishop. It is bad enough in your case, you deserve, to suffer. You have
committed this crime, and you deserve to have all you are going to get.
But here is an innocent man. Bishop had never done you any harm, and
see what you have done to him. He can never hold his head up again.
The world can never look upon Bishop as being a live person. He is a
corpse."

That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which
pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two
whenever it forced its way into my mind.
Now then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it arrived this
morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless I am an idiot, it
hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last. It is just as
good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with humor. There isn't
a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it anywhere. What could have
been the matter with that house? It is amazing, it is incredible, that they
didn't shout with laughter, and those deities the loudest of them all.
Could the fault have been with me? Did I lose courage when I saw
those great men up there whom I was going to describe in such a
strange fashion? If that happened, if I showed doubt, that can account
for it, for you can't be successfully funny if you show that you are
afraid of it. Well, I can't account for it, but if I had those beloved and
revered old literary immortals back here now on the platform at
Carnegie Hall I would take that same old speech, deliver it, word for
word, and melt them till they'd run all over that stage. Oh, the fault
must have been with me, it is not in the speech at all.

PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS
ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. E. SOCIETY,
PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1881
On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response, President Rollins said:
"This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly born
in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors. He is not
technically, therefore, of New England descent. Under the painful
circumstances in which he has found himself, however, he has done the
best he could--he has had all his children born there, and has made of
himself a New England ancestor. He is a self-made man. More than this,
and better even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of New
England ascent. To ascend there in any thing that's reasonable is
difficult; for--confidentially, with the door shut--we all know that they
are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly land who never leave it, and
it is among and above them that Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and
permanent ascent--become a man of mark."
I rise to protest. I have kept still for years; but really I think there is no

sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do you want to
celebrate those people for?--those ancestors of yours of 1620--the
Mayflower tribe, I mean. What do you want to celebrate them for?
Your pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not
celebrating the Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth rock on the 22d of December. So you are celebrating their
landing. Why, the other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than
ever; the other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf.
Celebrating their lauding! What was there remarkable about it, I would
like to know? What can you be thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims had
been at sea three or four months. It