Twains Letters vol 4 1886-1900 | Page 6

My judgment was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned.
For fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept
a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find
either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I
had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from
running into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a
little more in the dark.
Don't mind us--out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no
rights which you are in any way bound to respect. Please take your

electric light and go to--but never mind, it is not for me to suggest; you
will probably find the way; and any way you can reasonably count on
divine assistance if you lose your bearings.
S. L. CLEMENS.
[Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and
Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not
include in these volumes: "Gentleman:--Someday you are going to
move me almost to the point of irritation with your God-damned
chuckle headed fashion of turning off your God-damned gas without
giving notice to your God-damned parishioners--and you did it again
last night--" D.W.]
Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were
written. Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest,
sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary relief,
and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and wrote
something more temperate, or nothing at all. A few such letters here
follow.
Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who
wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays, tobacco,
and what not. They were generally persistent people, unable to accept a
polite or kindly denial. Once he set down some remarks on this
particular phase of correspondence. He wrote:
I
No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and
many an electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal.
And no doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of
activity whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this sort
of solicitation. Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from
pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to
get the loan of somebody else's.
As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case. He sees
that his invention or his painting or his book is--apparently--a trifle
better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be willing
to put your hall-mark on it? You will be giving the purchaser his full
money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm? Besides, are you
not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to do

that?
That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the
other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon a
thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be.
How simple that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred
who can, be made to see it.
When one receives an application of this sort, his first emotion is an
indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp answer.
He blames nobody but that other person. That person is a very base
being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it
would not occur to him that you would do such a thing. But all the
same, that application has done its work, and taken you down in your
own estimation. You recognize that everybody hasn't as high an
opinion of you as you have of yourself; and in spite of you there ensues
an interval during which you are not, in your own estimation as fine a
bird as you were before.
However, being old and experienced, you do not mail your sharp letter,
but leave it lying a day. That saves you. For by that time you have
begun to reflect that you are a person who deals in exaggerations--and
exaggerations are lies. You meant yours to be playful, and thought you
made them unmistakably so. But you couldn't make them playfulnesses
to a man who has no sense of the playful and can see nothing but the
serious side of things. You rattle on quite playfully, and with
measureless extravagance, about how you wept at the tomb of Adam;
and all in good time you find to your astonishment that no