Twains Letters vol 5 1901-1906 | Page 8

Brooks himself is
dull--he wearied me; oh how he wearied me!
We had a noble good time in the Yacht, and caught a Chinese
missionary and drowned him. Love from us all to you all. MARK.
The assassination of President McKinley occurred September 6, 1901.
Such an event would naturally stir Mark Twain to comment on human
nature in general. His letter to Twichell is as individual as it is sound in
philosophy. At what period of his own life, or under what
circumstances, he made the long journey with tragic intent there is no
means of knowing now. There is no other mention of it elsewhere in
the records that survive him.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
AMPERSAND, Tuesday, (Sept. 10, 1901) DEAR JOE,--It is another
off day, but tomorrow I shall resume work to a certainty, and bid a long
farewell to letter-scribbling.
The news of the President looks decidedly hopeful, and we are all glad,
and the household faces are much improved, as to cheerfulness. Oh, the
talk in the newspapers! Evidently the Human Race is the same old
Human Race. And how unjust, and unreflectingly discriminating, the
talkers are. Under the unsettling effects of powerful emotion the talkers
are saying wild things, crazy things--they are out of themselves, and do
not know it; they are temporarily insane, yet with one voice they
declare the assassin sane--a man who has been entertaining fiery and
reason-- debauching maggots in his head for weeks and months. Why,
no one is sane, straight along, year in and year out, and we all know it.
Our insanities are of varying sorts, and express themselves in varying
forms --fortunately harmless forms as a rule--but in whatever form they
occur an immense upheaval of feeling can at any time topple us
distinctly over the sanity-line for a little while; and then if our form
happens to be of the murderous kind we must look out--and so must the
spectator.
This ass with the unpronounceable name was probably more insane
than usual this week or two back, and may get back upon his bearings
by and by, but he was over the sanity-border when he shot the President.
It is possible that it has taken him the whole interval since the murder
of the King of Italy to get insane enough to attempt the President's life.
Without a doubt some thousands of men have been meditating the same
act in the same interval, but new and strong interests have intervened
and diverted their over-excited minds long enough to give them a
chance to settle, and tranquilize, and get back upon a healthy level
again. Every extraordinary occurrence unsettles the heads of hundreds
of thousands of men for a few moments or hours or days. If there had
been ten kings around when Humbert fell they would have been in
great peril for a day or more--and from men in whose presence they
would have been quite safe after the excess of their excitement had had
an interval in which to cool down. I bought a revolver once and
travelled twelve hundred miles to kill a man. He was away. He was
gone a day. With nothing else to do, I had to stop and think--and did.

Within an hour--within half of it-- I was ashamed of myself--and felt
unspeakably ridiculous. I do not know what to call it if I was not insane.
During a whole week my head was in a turmoil night and day fierce
enough and exhausting enough to upset a stronger reason than mine.
All over the world, every day, there are some millions of men in that
condition temporarily. And in that time there is always a moment--
perhaps only a single one when they would do murder if their man was
at hand. If the opportunity comes a shade too late, the chances are that
it has come permanently too late. Opportunity seldom comes exactly at
the supreme moment. This saves a million lives a day in the world--for
sure.
No Ruler is ever slain but the tremendous details of it are ravenously
devoured by a hundred thousand men whose minds dwell, unaware,
near the temporary-insanity frontier--and over they go, now! There is a
day--two days--three--during which no Ruler would be safe from
perhaps the half of them; and there is a single moment wherein he
would not be safe from any of them, no doubt.
It may take this present shooting-case six months to breed another
ruler- tragedy, but it will breed it. There is at least one mind somewhere
which will brood, and wear, and decay itself to the killing-point and
produce that tragedy.
Every negro burned at the stake unsettles the excitable brain of another
one--I mean the inflaming details of his crime, and the