Section 01 of Anti-Imperialist Writings. Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain Mark Twain Home Again Newspaper article from The New York Times, October 16, 1900. Mark Twain Home Again Writer reaches America after his prolonged stay abroad, greeted by many friends, talks freely of his travels, his experiences, and his triumphs in the best of health. Mark Twain returned to America yesterday on the Atlantic Transport Line steamship Minnehaha. As is well known, Mark Twain registers at hotels and assigns checks under the name of Samuel M. Clemens, but it was the writer and lecturer Mark Twain, who attracted to the peer so many friends and associates of former days. Mr. Clemens never looked better, was in a splendid humor, and greeted his friends with the most affectionate cordiality. As soon as the author had finished with the salutations of his friends, he was surrounded by a large number of newspaper men and asked for a story of what he had been doing during all the nine years of his absence from his native land. Now, that's a long story, but I suppose I must give you something even if it is in a condensed form, he said. I left America June 6, 1891, and I went to Ex-Leban, France, where I spent the fall and winter. After that I went to Berlin, where I lectured, giving readings from my works. After this, my next stop was the Riviera, where I remained for three months, going from there to the baths near Frankfurt, where I remained during the cholera season. Most of 1892 I spent at Florence, where I rented a home. While there I wrote Joan of Arc, and finished up Putinhead Wilson. For the next two years I was in France. I can't speak French yet. In the spring of 1895 I came to the United States for a brief stay crossing the Continent from New York to San Francisco, lecturing every night. In October of that year I sailed from Vancouver for Sydney, where I lectured, or more properly speaking, gave readings from my works to the English-speaking people. I also visited Tasmania and New Zealand. This was at the time of the famous Venezuelan message of President Cleveland, and it did my heart good to see that the animosities engendered by that message did not affect the affection of a people in a strange land for me. I then proceeded to India, lecturing in Ceylon, Bombay, and Calcutta. I then sailed for South Africa, arriving at Delagoa Bay in April 1896. In South Africa I visited Kimberley, Johannesburg, and finally Cape Town. I met Oom Paul. I had heard and read all about him—hat, beard, frock coat, pipe, and everything else. The picture is a true likeness. At this time the Jameson Raiders were in jail, and I visited them and made little speech trying to console them. I told them of the advantages of being in jail. This jail is as good as any other, I said. And besides, being in jail has its advantages. A lot of great men have been in jail. If Bunyan had not been put in jail, he would never have written Pilgrim's Progress. Then the jail is responsible for Don Quixote. So, you see, being in jail is not so bad, after all. Finally I told them that they ought to remember that many great men had been compelled to go through life without ever having been in jail. Some of the prisoners didn't seem to take much to the joke, while others seemed much amused. All this time my family was with me, and after a short stay at Cape Town we took a steamer for Southampton. On arriving in England we went to Guilford, where I took a furnished house, remaining two months, after which for ten months our home was in London. All this time I was lecturing, reading, or working hard in other ways, writing magazine stories and doing other literary work. After London came Vienna, to which city we went in September 1898, remaining until May of the following year. In order to allow one of my daughters to take music lessons from a man who spelled his name Lescetiske. He had plenty of identification, you see, and with all seemed to be a pretty smart fellow. After Vienna, where, by the way, I had a lot of fun watching the Reichstrat, we returned to London, in which city and Sweden we have been, until our departure for home some days ago. And now I am home again, and you have got the history of a considerable part of my life.  They gave you the courtesy of the port, didn't they? An intensely interested listener remarked. Yes, I wrote to Secretary Gage telling him that my baggage was on a sixteen thousand ton ship, which was quite large enough to accommodate all I had, which, while it consisted of a good many things, was not good enough to pay duty on, yet too good to throw away. I accordingly suggested that he write the customs people to let it in, as I thought they would be more likely to take his word than mine. How about your plans?" he was asked. I am absolutely unable to speak of my plans, he replied, in as much as I have none, and I do not expect to lecture. At this point the question of anti-imperialism was broached, someone asking, How are you on expansion? Are you for the President, or are you with those that style themselves anti-imperialists? Yes. As near as I can find out, I think that I am an anti-imperialist. I was not, though, until some time ago, for when I first heard of the acquisition of the present Pacific possessions, I thought it a good thing for a country like America to release those people from a bondage of suffering and oppression that had lasted three hundred years, but when I read the Paris Treaty I changed my mind. You were going to vote for Mr. Bryan, then, are you? was the query put to him by another bystander. No, I'm a mugwump. I don't know who I'm going to vote for. I must look over the field. Then, you know, I've been out of the country a long time, and I might not be allowed to register. You are still a citizen of the United States, are you not? interposed a member of the party. Well, I guess I am. I've been paying taxes on this side for the last nine years. I believe, though, a man can run for president, laughingly inquired Mr. Clemens, without a vote, can't he? If this is so, why then I am a candidate for president? Dropping anti-imperialism, Mr. Clemens made the plea that he had been way so long that he really knew very little on the subject, because all of his information had practically been gleaned from foreign papers. Someone in the crowd asked him about his autobiography that is to be published one hundred years hence. It is true I am writing it," he said. That's not a joke, is it? No. I said it seriously. That's why they take it as a joke. You know, I never told the truth in my life that someone didn't say I was lying, while on the other hand I never told a lie that somebody didn't take it as a fact. Well, it's not wrong anyway to tell a lie sometimes, is it? Was a question someone asked in a very conciliatory way. That's right. Exactly right. If you can disseminate facts by telling the truth, why, that's the way to do it. And if you can't, except by doing a little lying, well, that's all right too, isn't it? I do it. Mr. Clemens had become very restless by this time, and the many friends surrounding him on the pier managed to rescue him from the clutches of the newspaper men, who had been firing questions at him since he first appeared on the pier. I'll see you again. I'll be at the Erlington all the winter. I am not going to Hartford till next year. And with a pleasant nod of the head, the famous writer accompanied by his friends began a search for his baggage. End of Mark Twain Home Again. Recording by John Greenman. Section 2 of Anti-Imperialist Writings. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman. Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain. The Lotus Club Dinner Speech. First in the New York Times. November 17, 1900. Mark Twain. The Lotus Club Dinner. His speech, and the others. Those present. A Royal Welcome Home was extended to Samuel Langhorn Clemens, Mark Twain, last Saturday night at the Lotus Club. It was the initial dinner of the season at this popular club, which enjoys a reputation for brilliant gatherings and good fellowship. While the Lotus has many successful events set down to its credit, in the judgment of the members, none has surpassed the tribute it has paid to the Dean of American Humour, as Mr. Clemens was described by one of the speakers of the evening. By word and act he was made to feel that he was indeed in the house of his friends. Long before the breaking up of the company he must have been firmly impressed that his place was secure in their affections. Men of high positions in business, literature, politics, and the various professions gathered to do him honour. The dinner was somewhat delayed by the guest himself, who had forgotten that it was Saturday and the night of the feast. To the messenger, who was sent to inquire the reason for his absence, and who found him at his hotel, he said, I am so sorry, but I had forgotten this was Saturday. I thought it was Friday. I'll go right upstairs and dress. It won't take me fifteen minutes." President Franklin R. Lawrence presided, and besides Mr. Clemens, the guests at the main table were Governor-elect Benjamin B. O'Dell, Jr., St. Clair McElway, William Dean Howells, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, United States Governor Chauncey M. DePew, Booker T. Washington, Ex-Speaker Thomas B. Reed, Henry H. Rogers, George B. M. Harvey, E. Wood Perry, Jr., John Hare, Joseph C. Hendricks, Augustus Thomas, John Kendrick Bangs, Moncure D. Conway, S. E. Moffitt, Frank H. Platt. About ten o'clock President Lawrence wrapped for order and began the speeches of the evening in the following words. Our Lotus Club season opens very happily, for we have just voted ourselves some years of prosperity, and Mark Twain has come home. A applause. When in this fortunate country we want good times, we get them by popular vote. But, for the presence of Mark Twain, we depend upon a more uncertain caprice. Seven years ago he returned from abroad, and was entertained at dinner by this club with the result that he went straight back to Europe, and has remained out of the United States ever since. Laughter. It has been suggested that the club assemble in his honor regularly at similar intervals, but it has felt that after a time this would become a steady habit, and steady habits could never be made popular here. We welcome him home as one of the staunchest and truest members of the club, and we remember that he was one of those who, with the reed and brom, and Florence and Bromley and a score of kindred spirits, made the club sparkling and attractive in its early days, and laid broad and deep the foundation of all its later years of merriment and good fellowship. Our guest became a member of the club when it was only three years old, and now that it has seen more than ten times that number of years, he remains faithful to its principles, or at least he would be faithful to its principles, if it had any, and that amounts to the same thing. Applause and laughter. Well, he has been away, and he has been gone a long time, and I believe he has been around the world, and what he has been doing we only know in part. He says that he has been following the equator. What a fortunate thing it is that he did not, as the climax to a somewhat revolutionary career, induce the equator to follow him. Had that occurred, the equator would probably have passed the remainder of its days in Hartford, Connecticut, or some weird or literary portion of the globe, and its reputation for constancy would have been forever blasted. Some things about him we do know. We know that, while away from us, he has kept up a steady stream of work, furnishing to the world an abundance both of instruction and of amusement, and increasing his old reputation as one who, while he writes in fun, yet ever thinks in earnest. We hail him, as we have done before, as a master of letters, as the pioneer in a new and original field, as the possessor of a quaint and peculiar genius which has discovered unsuspected possibilities of language and of thought, and whose works, from the earliest to the latest, from the lightest to the most serious, have always commanded the widest audience and been received the world over with unbounded applause. We hail him, too, as one who has borne great burdens with manliness and courage, who has emerged from great struggles victorious, and, in welcoming him back to his old place, first taken at the Lotus Board nearly twenty-seven years ago, we greet him with all friendship and in all kindliness and hope that his life may be happy and prosperous, whether here or abroad, through all future time. Applause. Mark Twain. When Mr. Clemens rose to speak he was cheered long and heartily. It was nearly three minutes before he was permitted to proceed. Pushing his bushy white hair back from his forehead, he began. Mr. President and friends, I thank you for this greeting. I thank you all out of my heart. For this is a fraternal welcome. A welcome too magnificent for a humble Missourian, far from his native state, but I feel at home here, as there are other Missourians seated at this table, and I am glad to see Tom Reed here, too.  He has reformed, and, as he himself says, he is now engaged in raising the standard of beauty. Laughter. Your President has referred to certain burdens which I was weighed with. I am glad he did, as it gives me an opportunity which I would. To speak of those debts, you all knew what he meant when he referred to it, and of the poor bankrupt firm of C. L. Webster and Company. No one has said a word about those creditors. There were ninety-six creditors in all, and not by my finger's weight did ninety-five out of the ninety-six add to the burden of that time. They treated me well. They treated me handsomely. I never knew I knew anything. Not a sign came from them.  How I wish I could have creditors of that kind always. Laughter. Really, I recognize it as a personal loss to myself to be out of debt. I wasn't personally acquainted with ten of them, you know. Don't you worry and don't you hurry! that phrase is written on my heart. You are always very kind in saying things about me, but you have forgotten those creditors. They were the handsomest people I ever knew. They were handsomer than I was. Handsomer than Tom Reed. Cheers and laughter. How many things have happened in the seven years I have been away from home. We have fought a righteous war, and a righteous war is a rare thing in history. We have turned aside from our own comfort and seen to it that freedom should exist not only within our own gates, but in our own neighbourhood. We have set Cuba free and placed her among the galaxy of free nations of the world. We started out to set those poor Filipinos free, but why that righteous plan miscarried perhaps I shall never know. We have also been making a creditable showing in China, and that is more than all of the powers can say. The yellow terror is threatening the world, but no matter what happens the United States says that it has had no part in it. applause. Since I have been away we have been nursing free silver. Laughter. We have watched by its cradle. We have done our best to raise that child. But every time it seemed to be getting along nicely along came some pastiferous Republican and gave it the measles or something. Laughter and applause. I fear we will never raise that child. applause. We have done more than that. We elected a president four years ago. We have found fault with him and criticized him, and here a day or two ago we go and elect him for another four years, with votes enough to spare to do it over again. Laughter. We have tried a governor for two years and we liked him so well that we decided to put him in the great office of Vice President, not that the office may confer distinction upon him, but that may confer distinction upon the office. For a while we will not stammer and be embarrassed when somebody asks us the name of the Vice President. Laughter. He is widely known, and in some places favorably. Laughter. I am a little afraid that these fulsome compliments may be misunderstood. I have been away for a long time and I am not used to this complementary business. I merely want to testify to my old admiration for my friend, the governor. If you give him rope enough, prolonged laughter. I meant to say, well, it is not necessary for me to say any more. You know him. Renewed laughter. Then take O'Dell. You've made him governor. He's another rough rider, I suppose. All the fat things seemed to go to that profession. I would have been a rough rider myself had I known this political Klondike was going to open up. I would have gone to war if I could have gone in an automobile, but never on a horse. I know the horse too well. I know the horse in peace and in war. A horse thinks of too many things to do which you do not expect. He is apt to bite you in the leg when you think he is half asleep. A horse is too capricious for me. Laughter. We have taken Chauncey Depew out of an active and useful life and made him a senator. Embalmed him. Horked him up. Look at that gilded mummy. That man has said many a true thing about me in his time and I always said something would happen to him. That man has made my life miserable at many a banquet on both sides of the ocean and palsied be the hand that draws that cork. Laughter. All these things and many more have happened since I have been away. It only goes to show how little a mugwump, perhaps the last of his race, is missed in this unfeeling world. I come back and find myself a party by myself. Seven years ago when I was old and worn down, you gave me the grip and the word which lifts a man up and makes him glad to be alive. I come back from my exile fresh and young and alive, ready to begin anew. Applauds. Your welcome warms me. It makes me feel that it is a reality and not a glorious dream to vanish with the morning. Governor-elect O'Dell. Mr. Clemens was loudly cheered as he took his seat, and then President Lawrence called upon Governor-elect O'Dell, who received a hearty welcome. I was up in my home in Newburg prepared to take a rest. Usually when I get up there I take the telephone receiver off the hook so that no one can reach me, but I neglected to do so tonight and Riggs and Lorde managed to raise me and tell me I was wanted down here at the Lotus Club. I consulted with Mrs. O'Dell and she told me that while I could go to political dinners at any time there was but one Mark Twain, so I put on my coat and caught the first train to New York and here I am. I have known Mr. Clemens for a long time. The last time I met him was at a dinner given in London by the American Society to celebrate the anniversary of American independence, and I am glad to meet him here tonight at the Lotus Board. McEllaway has said that I am a statement-maker and not an orator, so you must not expect a speech from me. Laughter and applause. Mr. Reed. Ex-speaker Reed was presented by President Lawrence as one who had become a New Yorker and who as yet has shown no sign of being sorry for it. The former czar of the House of Representatives met with a warm welcome and spoke with a drawl which is familiar to those who have heard him. I want it to be understood that I fully appreciate this is a hopeless situation, the hopelessness of trying to meet our guest's ideas of what we ought to say about him. We can say nothing that will not seem to him absolutely inadequate. He will go home tonight and think over his invaluable services to mankind and think how utterly inadequate the words of his friends here have been. He will think it all over and say to himself, well, the boys meant well enough, but if they had known what they had been talking about they would have presented it better. He will learn after a while how to add the proper percent to bring the average of what has been said up to what he thinks should have been said. I want to say some things to him now that I have got him where he can't talk back, which will make it necessary to add on a heavy percentage. Laughter. I have been waiting for seven years to get at him for some things he said about me down in Washington. He came to Washington with a lot of those literary fellows with a vague idea that they were going to prove their rights to some of their own property. They came to see me. I had occasion to remind them that they were sitting under the influence of the political intelligence which fully comprehends things. Laughter. I explained to him that he and his friends were absolutely incapable of self-government. Laughter. We intended to let him keep some small percentage of right to his property, but we were going to benevolently assimilate his property, or most of it. Laughter. Apparently he behaved most creditably, but after he left me it was reported to me that he had gone around town telling people the things he would have said to me if he hadn't been scared. Laughter. We all owe him a debt greater than we can ever discharge for what he has given us. He has described the life on the Mississippi for us as has no other man, but when you read his books think of the wealth of vocabulary he had to draw on when he was writing about life on the Mississippi. Laughter. He says he was named after the prophet Samuel. He says he remembers lying in his cradle and thinking that in five minutes more he would be one day old. He says that he remembers his father and mother talking over a name for him. They spoke of Zerababble. I think that would have fitted him, and Samuel. At that name he says that he arose, climbed over the edge of the cradle, and left home. As he was leaving the door he said, Father I can't be named Samuel, why not, asked his father, because Samuel had to be called by the Lord twice before he had come. In twenty-four years his father overtook him and gave him Samuel and a sound thrashing. Now I can believe that he left his cradle and left home, but I do not believe him when he says the old gentleman overtook him and gave him a thrashing. No one ever overtook him. Great laughter and applause. Mr. Howells. Mr. Lawrence then introduced William Dean Howells in these words. It is many a long day since we had the pleasure of seeing in this club the distinguished author and friend of our guest upon whom I am now about to call. I remember that when Mr. Howells was with us last he began by saying that he could not speak at all, and he ended by making most of the speeches of the evening. I ought perhaps to say, in explanation of that statement, that it happened that our guest that night was a distinguished Italian dramatist who spoke no English, and Mr. Howells found himself in a position of translating all the speeches as he went along. Gentlemen, there is no name greater in contemporary American literature than that of Mr. William D. Howells. I know you will join me in expressing most warmly the gratification it gives us to see him in the Lotus Club, Mr. Howells said. I am not so fortunate tonight, as I was on the occasion that you allude to, because then I had merely to speak for everybody, and now I have to speak for myself. It is very much simpler to translate Italian than to get off one's own English, and if Mr. Clemens had as good as to put his speech into very choice Italian, I should have done my best to put it into equivalent English. However, like all impromptu speakers I prepared myself most carefully beforehand, and I hope you don't mind my reading what I have to say. If you meet a humorist on his own ground, the chances are that you will be thrown down unless you are a very great joker. He will probably not joke you, or if he doesn't people will think he does, which is quite as bad. The only way is to take him seriously, and then if you praise him he will be apt to think you are in earnest. That is why I am going to be serious in the very little I have to say about our great and good friend tonight, though we have not arrived at that happy stage of the complimentary dinner when the guest, unless he is a person of extraordinary perspicacity, does not know whether you are praising him or not. He is so thickly buttered by this time that he thinks everything offered him is butter and in a lordly dish. If you get out your little hammer and drive your little nail into his skull he smiles blindly when it reaches his gray matter, and comes round at the end of the dinner with the head of the nail sticking out to say, Thank you, old fellow, that was very nice of you. I hope you don't have too much on your conscience. Like everyone else here I am glad to have Mr. Clemens among us again, because, for one thing, I hate to see him having such a good time abroad. We always suspect a fellow citizen who has a good time abroad. We are afraid that there must be something wrong about it. We feel that he never could have been what we thought him, if other people think so too. We are jealous of his fame, if it is universal. We should have liked to keep it to ourselves. Many a time in the course of the last nine years my heart has been saddened by the acceptance of our friend in France, Germany, Austria and England, as one of the first humorists of all times, and I have done what little I could to set the right among those who loved him as I did by whispering round that they were overdoing it. But now that we have got him back I am not so sure that they were overdoing it. At any rate I wish to lift my voice in welcoming him home and to be one of the very first publicly to forgive him. I realize that he was not to blame because other peoples have appreciated him in their poor, unintelligent way and told him so in languages which are difficult for any true American to understand. We ought to forgive him in our own interest, if for no other reason, for no one else has been so fully in the joke of us, or known better how to interpret us to ourselves, and at no other period of our national life have we been a greater joke or more needed interpretation. He has probably arrived by a happy instinct to tell us just what we mean, and to declare how about it when we are ourselves most in the dark. He is, at any rate, a humorist of continental dimensions, and he could not be the great humorist he is without being vastly better, if there is anything better. If it is really better to be a sagacious reader of contemporary history, a generous and compassionate observer of one's kind, a philosopher without a theory, a poet whose broad-winged imagination transcends the balance of verse, perhaps it takes all these to make up the sum of a great humorist. At least we find them all summed up in the humorist whom we amusingly suppose ourselves to be honoring tonight, when he is so obviously honoring us. Why, in a manner, he has invented us, and has more than any other man, made us the component parts of the great American joke which we all realize ourselves to be when we are serious. More than others he has discovered us to ourselves. He has determined our modern mental attitude, fixed our point of view, and he could not have done this without being vitally of the material he worked in. He has invented us. But then we invented him to begin with, and that is where I think we have a reason to be proud. Before us no people had a humorist with nothing cruel but everything kindly in his smile who never laughed with the strong against the weak or found anything droll in suffering or deformity. When we look back over our literature and see what savage and stupid and pitiless things have passed for humor, and then open his page, we seem not only to have invented the only true humorist, but to have invented humor itself. We do not know by what mystery his talent sprang up from our soil and flowered in our air, but we know that no such talent has been known to any other, and if we set any bounds to our joy in him, it must be from the innate American modesty, not always perceptible to the alien eye, which forbids us to keep throwing bouquets at ourselves. St. Clair McElway. St. Clair McElway was the next speaker. He said, Years ago we here sought to hold up Mark Twain's hands. Now we all feel like holding up our own in congratulation of him and of ourselves, of him because his warfare is accomplished, of ourselves because he has returned to our company. If it was a pleasure to know him then, it is a privilege and an honor to know him now. He has fought the good fight. He has kept the faith. He is ready to be offered up. But we are not ready to have him offered up. For we want the Indian summer of his life to be long, and that to be followed by a genial winter, which, if it be as frosty as his hair, shall also be as kindly as his heart. He has enough excess and versatility of ability to be a genius. He has enough quality and quantity of virtues to be a saint. But he has honorably transmuted his genius into work, whereby it has been brought into relations with literature and with life, and he has preferred warm fellowship to cold perfection so that sinners love him and saints are content to wait for him. May they wait long. I think he is entitled to be regarded as the Dean of America's humor, that he is entitled to the distinction of being the greatest humorous this nation ever had. I say this with a fair knowledge of the chiefs of the entire corps, from Francis Hopkinson and the author of hasty pudding, down to Bill Nye and Dooley. None of them would I deprecate. I would greatly prefer to honor and hail them all for the singular fittedness of their gifts to the needs of the nation in their times. Hopkinson and Joe Barlow lightened the woes of the revolution by the touch of nature that makes the whole world grin. See how Smith relieved the Yankee sense of tension under the impact of Jacksonian roughness by tickling its ribs with a quill. Lieutenant Derby turned the searchlight of fun on the stiff formalities of army posts, on the raw conditions of alkali journalism, and on the solemn humbugs of frontier politics. James Russell Lowell used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England conscience was insisted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic, satirized military ignorance and pinch-beck bluster to an immortality of contempt. Bret Hart, in verse and story, touched the parallels of tragedy and of comedy, of pathos, of bathos, and of humor, which love of life and lust of gold opened up amid the unapprehended grandeurs and the coveted treasures of primeval nature. Charles F. Brown made Artemis Ward as well known as Abraham Lincoln in the time the two divided the attention of the world. Bill Nye singed the shams of his day and duly dissects for Hennessy the shams of our own. Nor should we forget Eugene Field, the attifier of childhood, or Joel Chandler Harris, the fabulous of the plantation, or Ruth McHenry Stewart, the coronal singer of the joys and hopes, the loves and the dreams of the images of God in Ebony in the Old South, ere it leaped and hardened to the new. To these love and honor, but to this man honors crown of honor, for he has made a mark none of the others has reached. Few of them have diversified the delights to be drawn from their pages of humor. They have, as humorists, in distinction to the work of moralists, novelists, orators, and poets, in which the rarest among them shine, they have, as humorists in the main, worked a single vein, and some of them were humorous for a purpose, a dreary grind that, and some of them were only humorous for a period as well as for a purpose. The purpose served the period past, the humor that was of their life a thing apart ceased. His Clemens' whole existence. Applause. As Bacon made all learning his province, so Mark Twain has made all life and history his quarry, from the jumping frog to the Yankee at Arthur's court, from the inquested petrification that died of protracted exposure to the present Parliament of Austria, from the grave of Adam to the mysteries of the Adamless Eden known as the League of Professional Women, from mulberry cellars to Joan of Arc and from Edward VI to Putinhead Wilson, who wanted to kill his half of a deathless dog. Nevada is forgiven its decay because he flashed the oddities of its zenith life on pages that endure. California is worth more than its gold because he showed to men the heart under its swagger. He annexed the Sandwich Islands to the fun of the nation long before they were put under the flag. Because of him the Missouri and the Mississippi go not unvext to the sea, for they ripple with laughter as they recall Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Poor Jim and the Duke. Europe, Asia Minor and Palestine are open door to the world thanks to this pilgrim's progress with his innocence abroad. Purity, piety and pity shine out from prince and pauper like the eyes of a wandering deer on a torch lighted night from a wooded fringe of mountain and of lake. But enough of what I fear is already too much. In expressing my debt to him I hope I express somewhat at least of yours. I cannot repay him in kind any more than I could rival him. None of us can. But we can render to him a return he would like. With him we can get our way to reality and burn off pretense as acid eats its way to the denuded plate of the engraver. We can strip the veneer of convention from style and strengthen our thoughts in his Anglo-Saxon well of English undefiled. We can drop seeming for sincerity. We can be relentless toward hypocrisy and tender to humanity. We can rejoice in the love of laughter without ever once letting it lead us to libertinism of fancy. We can reach through humour the heart of man. We can make exaggeration the scourge of meanness and the magnifier of truth on the broad screen of life. By study of him the nothing new under the sun can be made fresh and fragrant by the supreme art of putting things. Though none of us can handle his wand, all of us can be transformed by it into something different from and finer than our dull selves. That is our delight. That is our debt. Both do to him. And long may he remain with us to brighten, to broaden, and to better our souls with the magic mirth and with the mirthful magic of his incomparable spell. applause John Hare John Hare, the actor, discussing the drama, said, My task is rendered comparatively easy, because we are here not to enter the lists in oratoricals rivalry, but to unite in paying homage to a great, distinguished, and brilliant writer, and to use an Americanism, a lovely man. The last time I had the pleasure of listening to Mr. Clemens was at a dinner in London on the occasion of Sir Henry Irving's return from America. Among the toasts was one to the drama with the names of Mark Twain and Mr. Pinheiro coupled. We all looked forward to the speeches of these two. Mr. Pinheiro had come, we could see from the expression of his face, all prepared to give us a very weighty essay on the drama, but Mr. Clemens spoke first, and with such brilliant humour and wit that the effect was electrical. We waited for Mr. Pinheiro, but the air was so charged with the electricity of humour that Mr. Pinheiro could only sit down with the remark, I beg to return my thanks for this honour. The health of the drama is extremely good. Its vitality is excessive. In the past we have had as good better plays, and as good players, but at present we have more of them. There may be no genius, but the average is far better. In this there is a great solace and a great danger. Genius may do what it likes. Average ability must be controlled. The practical extinction of the actor-manager in our country and his total extinction in yours are a great menace. It is impossible for the commercial director to amalgamate and control those forces which give to the public the perfect drama. It is the fashion now to cry down the actor-manager. What a mistake! What a folly! The more I look around the more I deplore the lack of state and municipal aid for the theatre. In England we can never hope for it, but in this country it could be, and looking upon the ability of your actors and the grace of your actresses, my impression is that in this country could be founded the finest dramatic school in the world. Senator DePue. Senator DePue was greeted with a round of applause which showed that his popularity had not waned at the lotus. He began by telling a story of a rural friend who once had gone to hear Mark Twain lecture. Upon his return the senator asked, Hear Mark? Yes. Was he funny? Yes, funny. But not damn funny! Mr. DePue then said, I learned later that my friend had listened to a lecture by the reverend Joseph Cook. Our friend Mark owes his distinction to that faculty so much abused in politics and business humor. Every man who has made a success in politics has been handicapped by being a joker. I never yet met a man who had made a fortune who could tell a story or get off a joke. I never yet saw a man worth one million dollars at any function who didn't want to get back to the office in five minutes. No man can make one million dollars if he is funny. That's nothing against the man with the one million dollars or the man who makes a joke. It simply shows that there are two avenues, and some of us take one, and some the other. Tonight's evening post had a leading article on two distinguished citizens, one of whom had recently died. The paper said, Mr. Bryan and myself. Of the late lamented Mr. Bryan, the post said that he had lost the opportunity of being president by lowering himself in his speeches to the level of the common people, and as for Depew, no one who jokes can be president. Having followed Bryan through the canvas, I never expected to be bracketed with him, but I'm willing to have my chances of being president classed with him. I believe that when a man once gets to be president of the United States, if he has wit and humor, they add enormously to the distinction, but that he can never get there if it is known beforehand. Lincoln was not known outside of Illinois when he ran for president, but after he got to be president he began illustrating anything he wanted the people to understand by humor, and he became the greatest factor we ever had in American politics. Lincoln once said to me, I know they say I lower the dignity of the presidential office and that I don't rise to its high plain, but I have found that the plain people are more easily influenced by broad, humorous illustrations than any other way, and, young man, I don't care what hyper-critical people say. It gives me great pleasure to appear before an assembly which comprises so much of the journalistic, artistic, and bohemian circles of our great American Commonwealth. I am pleased with the honor to unite here with you in praising the distinguished guest. He began life in a humble sphere, a characteristic of all men rising to distinction in our country. He became, at one time, connected with the transportation interests of the land. If he had continued in that sphere, he might, some time, have reached the lofty position of president of one of the great carrying companies of our country. Although he began humbly in the pilot-house of a steamboat, I am assured by one who knew him that he had the respect of the passengers and the confidence of the owners of the boat. I am not sure, but he made a mistake when he left that path for the path of literature. He has a genius unique which has secured him recognition on both sides of the Atlantic, and, as an American citizen, I thank him. Had he abandoned humor for the higher walks of literature, which Homer and Aristotle ornamented, I am not sure, but he would have achieved greater distinction. Now, that's the candidate's speech, and I hope the post will give me credit for being equal to the job, if I should take it. Senator Depew then told a new joke on the guest of the evening. The story was that while in London he had received a draft from America for one thousand twenty-five pounds, and attempted to cash the duplicate of it after cashing the original, believing it was another draft. At the first bank he went to, Mr. Depew said they told Mr. Clemens that he was a great humorist, but if it wasn't a joke they would send for the police. At the Union Bank of London he was detained while a man from the Home Secretary's office was summoned. The latter, Mr. Depew said, told the humorist that his reputation was a glory to the literary world, but in order not to destroy the cordiality between the two nations he thought Mr. Clemens had better go home. And that, said Mr. Depew, is why Mark Twain is here tonight. The laughter that followed was mingled with calls for an explanation from the man the joke was on, so Mr. Clemens accommodated them. He said the story was not all true as told. I am, said he, a literary person, and not acquainted with commercial details. I got the draft, and in a day or two I got another just like it, which was a gratifying surprise. I thought it judicious to cash them one at a time. I cashed the first one, but I didn't know what to make of the other, but I thought likely the bank had forgotten it had sent the first one. I needed advice, so I went to Mr. Depew, laid the whole circumstances before him, asked him what he would do about it, and he said he would collect it, and that's what all the trouble was due to. I went from place to place and couldn't get anyone to pay that draft, and finally I suspected Depew. John Kendrick Bangs John Kendrick Bangs was then introduced. He began his remarks with a few gesting allusions to Mr. Clemens' observations on Senator Depew's railway interests, and in proceeding said, I must confess that I have listened with some astonishment and regret to the address of the gentleman who edits an evening paper in the Brooklyn end of Greater New York. I greatly enjoyed Mr. McKellaway's interesting lecture on humor and humorists until he reached a point where he failed to mention, while he admitted two great New Yorkers. Governor-Elect O'Dell, who has a little joker in the political pack, has recently proved quite a pronounced success in his own special line, and another, a great favorite of mine, whose omission reminds me of an experience of my own in a previous state of existence. I was trying to get into politics at the time, and it took all that my friends could do to keep me out. They succeeded, however. But during that brief but bitter period, I was introduced to a willing voter. He was more willing than I was, so I lost him. It seems that I was no better known to him as a combination than as a candidate. For, after gazing at me for a moment with that bewildered expression which the meek and lowly always feel in the presence of the truly great, he observed huskily, My God! Are you John Kendrick Bangs? Yes, said I. Well, by heavens, said he, I've seen you, and I've seen your name. But I'll be damned if I ever put the two together before. Maybe that is the case with Mr. McKellway and his omission of the name of my favorite author from his list of the elect. He has seen his name and he has seen his work, but the combination of humorist did not suggest itself to him, all of which taken together with other incidents this evening rather clears up a situation which has somewhat perplexed me. I could not understand why, however, welcome the task. I should be honored with an invitation to help the Lotus Club in doing honor to our distinguished guest. As the evening has worn on, however, the reason has become obvious. It is quite evident that, in order to heighten the glory of Mark Twain, the committee of arrangements have invited to act as a background to their effulgent guest, all the second-class humorists of this country and abroad, Governor Odell of Newburgh, Thomas Brackett Reed, and St. Clair McKellway of Missouri, and John Hare, and Senator DePue of London, and Sandringham, respectively. How successfully they have carried out their brilliant idea of the speeches we have listened to attest. Now, I suppose that even the mouse which crept into the lion's cage was glad in spite of his physical shortcomings that he belonged to the forefooted order of beings, just as did the more massive creature upon whom he called to pay his respects. I am entitled, therefore, in spite of making shortcomings, to take pride and pleasure in being one of the biped family who have essayed to make the world happier and brighter by calling attention to the lighter side of life, and whatever my failings may have been, I shall leave this gathering tonight with a swelling head as well as with a swelling heart, because as far as I personally am concerned, I regarded as a sufficient distinction in calling to have been permitted to lay my tribute of affectionate esteem and earnest appreciation at the feet of the great philanthropist to whom we are doing honor tonight and in this company. The speeches at the Lotus Club are, as a rule, so numerous and so long that it rarely happens that the majority of the speakers get a chance to say anything until the next morning, so I shall not detain you with any remarks of mine tonight, further than to say that the milestones along the footpath of Mark Twain, from the insignificant beginnings along the brilliant way to success, which he has so persistently followed for so many years, and which has led him into and found for him there, a home in the hearts of the English-speaking people everywhere, are not unlike the little guideposts on the footpath to Peace, which have been so beautifully and eloquently described by Dr. Henry Van Dyke, himself a humorist of no mean order, in his charming prose poem of that name. Dr. Van Dyke's poem is copyrighted, but I know he will forgive me if I read it in part to you in my ardent wish to do honor to the man we pay homage to tonight. It reads as follows, To be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars. To be satisfied with your possessions, but not contented with yourself until you have made the best of them.  To be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts. To covet nothing that is your neighbors except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners. To think seldom of your enemies and often of your friends, and to spend as much time as you can with body and with spirit in God's out-of-doors. These are little guideposts on the footpath to Peace. It seems to me, Mr. President, that it is because that in and between every line he has written the sweet underlying principles of the Creed of Peace, as set forth by Dr. Van Dyke, have shone conspicuously forth. Mark Twain is regarded by most of us as a gift of a divine providence. His work is full of the gladness of life. It is full of incentive to love and to work. It is full of play. It is full of God's out-of-doors. The humorist has been satisfied with his possessions, but it is apparent that he has not been contented with himself until he has made the best of them. There is no note of fault finding in anything that he has done save when falsehood and meanness give reason to its being, and that he has feared nothing save cowardice, has been shone by the noble and courageous fight which he has made under conditions so adverse that they would have overwhelmed a man of less strenuous fiber. He has been governed by his admirations rather than by his disgusts, and in his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners he has no reason to covet even his neighbor, for these were gifts which were lavished upon him in richest profusion from the beginning of his ban. It is these qualities that have made the humor of Mark Twain a cherished possession in every home of this land, and which will keep his name alive and reverenced by all who love that which is good and uplifting long after he and we have passed unto the unknown. Secretary Chester S. Lorde then gave those present another opportunity for a hearty laugh by reading a letter from F. Hopkinson Smith, in which Mr. Smith accused Mark Twain of having taken his overcoat, and of not returning it. Mr. Clemens was again called on to defend himself, and confess that he had been guilty of taking the overcoat, but had returned a handkerchief he had found in one of the pockets. Joseph C. Hendricks spoke briefly and eulogized Mr. Clemens. The guest of the evening, he said, told us that he felt a personal loss at being free of debt. I am prepared, on Monday morning, to remedy that if he will give his note, for every banker in the United States knows that note will be paid. Augustus Thomas paid a brief tribute to the guest of the evening, who, he said, was the foremost humorous of his time. III Other Speeches by Mark Twain Mark Twain made three speeches at the reception tendered him by the New York Press Club on Monday night. He was first introduced in most glowing terms by the president of the club, Colonel William L. Brown, whereupon he said, And must I always begin, with a regret, that I have left my gun behind? I've said so many times that if a gentleman introduced me with compliments and then sat down, I'd use a gun. But as I haven't the gun I am going to give this chairman of yours a dose of his own medicine. Gentlemen, you behold before you an old, old man. His features would deceive one. Apparently he is heartened, a person dead to all honest impulses. On these features are the marks of an unimaginable crime. And yet the features belie themselves. Instead of having led a life of crime, as his face indicates, he began in a Sunday school, and will end there. He has always led an exemplary life, one of those lives that make you think of all the long words in the vocabulary that suggest virtue, virtue which he appears to have, but has not. His public history has been merely a deception, milestoneed every now and then by misdemeanors. But these misdemeanors were only the effervescences of a great nature, the accidents of a great career. He really has all the virtues known, and he practices them secretly. Gentlemen, you know him too well for me to further prolong this introduction. Mr. Clemens sat down, and the victim of his joke said a few words to turn the tables on him in which needless to say the victim was unsuccessful. Then Joseph I. C. Clark took the floor and told how Mr. Twain had discovered that the foundation of all humor in life was seriousness. He found that all fun comes from tears, and so he has been making fun of the American people for the last one hundred and fifty years, maybe longer. Why, this marked Twain once made a Scotchman laugh. Mr. Clark closed his talk with a story of how the humorous drew just after the Franco-Prussian War, a map of Paris, showing the position that the German army had occupied by the picture of a depleted brewery. Then Mr. Twain got up again and said, I rise this time, without invitation, in order to defend myself. You need it, you need it," interrupted Colonel Brown. Yes, Mr. Twain went on, and there are others here older than I that need it more. What I was going to say was this. I don't mind slanders and that sort of thing. The facts are what I object to. I don't want anybody to know my true history and I appeal to you journalists to keep it from getting abroad. When you live as long as I have, you'll find out that the world knows you much more favorably than you know yourself. I tell you, when you wake up in the morning feeling bad and thinking yourself a pretty low-down kind of a creature, it is not on account of what the world thinks of the slanders of other people, but on account of some infamous deed you have committed and which nobody but yourself knows anything about. Now, the things that those Westerners said about me were all slanders. There was no truth in them. The true things that I did in the region, they didn't know, so they couldn't tell them. If they could, they would have put me in a hole. I have not been an alleged humorist. I have been a wise man, a Solomon. I have kept secret the things I have done. But it is no wonder that those people told slanderous tales about me. I would have done the same thing for you. Mr. Clark is right in saying that the foundation of humor is seriousness and gravity. Contrast is what brings out humor. To show you that this is true, I will tell you how I came to draw that very map of Paris which he spoke about. It was in 1870 or 1871, I think. In my home was a very sick friend of ours. For days and nights my wife and I sat up and worried. What made the strain worse was the fact that we did not know where to locate the family of our sick friend. In vain we made inquiries to discover what was their post office, so that we might reach them by wire. It was no use, and the strain continued for three long weeks. At the end of that time I was completely worn out, exhausted, miserable. Then came the reaction. I sat down and took a big M and made that map of Paris. But when I went to print the map it was upside down. I had forgotten that the cut of a map had to be made reversely in order to have the map look right on paper. The thing that I printed didn't look any more like Paris than like New York. It was a sight to behold. But it was published nevertheless, and some people said it was very humorous. Under it I placed a dozen explanatory notes, but they didn't explain. Then I attached some more notes, without improving the value of the map as a map. But folks said it was funny. Some American students in Berlin took it from one beer mill to another and laughed over it. Then some native Germans got hold of it and talked excited German about it. These Germans saw nothing funny in it, and there was humor in that very fact. Now you can see how a very sad experience resulted in arousing my humor, for if it hadn't been for that sick friend of ours I would never have drawn the map of Paris. Mr. Clemens was followed by Mr. Hennessy, who began by saying that he had never read any of the humorous books. Then John W. Keller said he had read all those books and declared that newspaper men had no greater source of inspiration than the writings of Mark Twain. Mr. Clemens followed with his Good-Night talk. He said, I want to say good-night. Times have changed, you know. I am old. I am reformed, too. I am just as competent to run all night as I ever was, and more competent to discuss scotch whiskey when it is good, and I see many before me who can do that. But when one becomes respectable, one must go home early. It is to protect my reputation that I am going. The last time I was with you I was like the rest of you, not respectable. All the slanders that were poured upon me tonight, I know, were pure artificialities. The compliments paid me were the only things that had the imprint of truth. I shall take the compliments home and forget the slanders. I have one thing to say before I go. Of all these slanders there is only one that rankles, and it is not a slander on me, but on the man that said it. He said he had never read my books. Now that hurts. Really, I can't understand it. He seemed so intelligent, so intelligent. But how could he be so under the circumstances? If he hasn't read those books, his intelligence must be artificial. Mr. Keller has read them, and he simply oozes intelligence. He is brimming over with it. I bid you good night and thank you very much. Another dinner. Another dinner in this city, to Mark Twain, in honour of his return home, is announced. It will be given by the Aldine Association at its rooms 111 Fifth Avenue on Tuesday evening, December 4. The Committee of Arrangements expects to secure a number of other prominent guests. End of the Lotus Club speech. Recording by John Greenman. Section 03 of Anti-Imperialist Writings. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman. Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain. Introducing Winston Churchill. China and the Philippines. At a dinner given in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel December 1900. Winston Spencer Churchill was introduced by Mr. Clemens. For years I've been a self-appointed missionary to bring about the Union of America and the Motherland. They ought to be united. Behold America! The refuge of the oppressed from everywhere, who can pay fifty dollars admission. Anyone except a Chinaman. Standing up for human rights everywhere. Even helping China let people in free when she wants to collect fifty dollars upon them. And how unselfishly England has wrought for the open door for all. And how piously America has wrought for that open door in all cases where it was not her own. Yes, as a missionary I've sung my songs of praise. And yet I think that England sinned when she got herself into a war in South Africa, which she could not have avoided, just as we sinned in getting into a similar war in the Philippines. Mr. Churchill, by his father, is an Englishman. By his mother he is an American. No doubt a blend that makes the perfect man. England and America. Yes, we are kin. And now that we are also kin in sin there is nothing more to be desired. The harmony is complete. The blend is perfect. End of Introducing Winston Churchill. Recording by John Greenman. Section 04 of Anti-Imperialist Writings. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman. Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain. A salutation speech from the nineteenth century to the twentieth. Taken down in shorthand by Mark Twain. A greeting from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.  Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking-glass. December 31, 1900. End of a salutation speech from the nineteenth century to the twentieth. Recording by John Greenman. Section 05 of Anti-Imperialist Writings. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman. Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain. Letter to Reverend Joseph H. Twitchell, dated 29 January 1901. The letter which follows is a fair sample of Mark Twain's private violence on a subject which, in public print, he could only treat effectively by preserving his good humor. When he found it necessary to boil over, as he did now and then, for relief he always found a willing audience in Twitchell. The mention of his private philosophy refers to What is Man? privately published in 1906, reissued by his publishers in 1916. To Reverend J. H. Twitchell in Hartford. 14 West Tenth. January 29 01. Dear Joe! I'm not expecting anything but kicks for scoffing and am expecting a diminution of my bread and butter by it, but if Livvy will let me I will have my say. This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth, ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket.  I can't understand it. You are a public guide and teacher, Joe, and are under a heavy responsibility to men, young and old, if you teach your people as you teach me to hide their opinions when they believe the flag is being abused and dishonored, lest the utterance do them and a publisher a damage, how do you answer for it to your conscience? You are sorry for me. In the fair way of give and take I am willing to be a little sorry for you. However, I seem to be going counter to my own private philosophy, which Livvy won't allow me to publish, because it would destroy me. But I hope to see it in print before I die. I planned it fifteen years ago and wrote it in ninety-eight. I've often tried to read it to Livvy, but she won't have it. It makes her melancholy. The truth always has that effect on people. Would have they if they ever got hold of a rag of it, which they don't?  Drop that idea. I care nothing for the rest. I am only distressed and troubled because I am befouled by these things. That is all. When I search myself away down deep, I find this out. Whatever a man feels or thinks or does, there is never any but one reason for it, and that is a selfish one. At great inconvenience and expense of precious time I went to the chief synagogue the other night and talked in the interest of a charity school of poor Jew girls. I know, to the finest shades, the selfish ends that move me, but no one else suspects. I could give you the details if I had time. You would perceive how true they are. I've written another article—you better hurry down and help Livy squelch it. She's out pottering around somewhere, poor housekeeping slave, and Clara is in the hands of the osteopath, getting the bronchitis pulled and hauled out of her. It was a bad attack, and a little disquieting. It came day before yesterday, and she hasn't sat up till this afternoon. She is getting along satisfactorily now. Lots of love to you all. Mark. Christmas will dawn in the United States over a people full of hope and inspiration and good cheer. Such a condition means contentment and happiness. The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth will find few to listen to him. The majority will wonder what is the matter with him and pass on. New York Tribune on Christmas Eve From the Son of New York The purpose of this article is not to describe the terrible offenses against humanity committed in the name of politics in some of the most notorious East Side districts. They could not be described even verbally. But it is the intention to let the great mass of more or less careless citizens of this beautiful metropolis of New World get some conception of the havoc and ruin wrought to man, woman and child in the most densely populated and least known section of the city. Name, date and place can be supplied to those of little faith, or to any man who feels himself aggrieved. It is a plain statement of record and observation written without license and without garnish. Imagine if you can, a section of the city territory completely dominated by one man without whose permission either legitimate nor illegitimate business can be conducted. Where illegitimate business is encouraged and legitimate business discouraged, where the respectable residents have to fasten their doors and windows summer nights and sit in their rooms with asphyxiating air and one hundred degree temperature rather than try to catch the faint whiff of breeze in their natural breathing places, the stoops of their homes, where naked women dance by night in the streets and unsexed men prowl like strangers through the darkness on business, not only permitted but encouraged by the police, where the education of infants begins with the knowledge of prostitution and the training of little girls is training in the arts of frying, where American girls brought up with the refinements of American homes are imported from small towns upstate Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey and kept as virtually prisoners as if they were locked up behind jail bars until they have lost all semblance of womanhood, where small boys are taught to solicit for the women of disorderly houses, where there is an organized society of young men whose sole business in life is to corrupt young girls and turn them over to body houses, where men walking with their wives along the streets are openly insulted, where children that have adult diseases are the chief patrons of the hospitals and dispensaries, where it is the rule rather than the exception that murder, rape, robbery and theft go unpunished, in short, where the premium of the most awful forms of vice is the profit of the politicians. The following news from China appeared in the Sun of New York on Christmas Eve. The italics are mine. The reverend Mr. Amant of the American Board of Foreign Missions has returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting indemnities for damages done by boxers. Everywhere he went he compelled the Chinese to pay. He says that all his native Christians are now provided for. He had seven hundred of them under his charge and three hundred were killed. He has collected three hundred teals for each of these murders and has compelled full payment for all the property belonging to Christians that was destroyed. He also assessed fines amounting to thirteen times the amount of the indemnity. This money will be used for the propagation of the gospel. Mr. Amant declares that the compensation he has collected is moderate, when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics who demand in addition to money, head for head. They collect five hundred teals for each murder of a Catholic. In the Wenxiu country six hundred and eighty Catholics were killed and for this the European Catholics here demand seven hundred and fifty thousand strings of cash and six hundred and eighty heads. In the course of a conversation Mr. Amant referred to the attitude of the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said, I deny emphatically that the missionaries are vindictive, that they generally looted or that they have done anything since the siege that the circumstances did not demand. I criticize the Americans. The soft hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the Germans. If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take advantage of it. The statement that the French government will return the loot taken by the French soldiers is the source of the greatest amusement here. The French soldiers were more systematic looters than the Germans and it is a fact that today Catholic Christians carrying French flags and armed with modern guns are looting villages in the provinces of Chile. By happy luck we get all these glad tidings on Christmas Eve just in time to enable us to celebrate the day with proper gaiety and enthusiasm. Our spirits soar and we find we can even make jokes. Teals I win, heads you lose. Our reverend Amant is the right man in the right place. What we want of our missionaries out there is not that they shall merely represent in their acts and persons the grace and gentleness and charity and loving kindness of our religion but that they shall also represent the American spirit. The oldest Americans are the Pawnees.  Also they make some white village pay deceased heirs the full cash value of deceased together with full cash value of the property destroyed. They also make the village pay in addition 13 times the value of that property into a fund for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion which they regard as the best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right that the innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty and that it is better that 90 and 9 innocent should suffer than that one guilty person should escape.  But he should soothe himself with a reflection that the entirety of their exactions are for their own pockets whereas he, less selfishly, devotes only three hundred teals per head to that service and gives the whole vast thirteen repetitions of the property indemnity to the surface of propagating the gospel. His magnanimity has won him the approval of his nation and will get him a monument. Let him be content with these rewards. We all hold him dear for manfully defending his fellow missionaries from exaggerated charges which were beginning to distress us but which his testimony has so considerably modified that we can now contemplate them without noticeable pain. For now we know that even before the siege the missionaries were not generally outlooting and that since the siege they have acted quite handsomely except when circumstances crowded them. I am arranging for the monument. Subscriptions for it can be sent to the American board. Designs for it can be sent to me. Designs must allegorically set forth the thirteen reduplications of the indemnity and the object for which they were exacted. As ornaments the designs must exhibit six hundred and eighty heads so disposed as to give a pleasing and pretty effect, for the Catholics have done nicely and are entitled to notice in the monument. Mottoes may be suggested, if any shall be discovered that will satisfactorily cover the ground. Mr. Amant's financial feat of squeezing a thirteen-fold indemnity out of the pauper peasants to square other people's offenses, thus condemning them and their women and innocent little children to inevitable starvation and lingering death in order that the blood money so acquired might be used for the propagation of the gospel does not flutter my serenity. Although the act and the words taken together, concrete, a blasphemy so hideous and so colossal that, without doubt, its mate is not findable in the history of this or of any other age. Yet if a layman had done that thing and justified it with those words, I should have shuddered, I know. Or if I had done the thing and said the words myself, however the thought is unthinkable, irreverent as some imperfectly informed people think me. Sometimes an ordained minister sets out to be blasphemous. When this happens the layman is out of the running. He stands no chance. We have Mr. Amant's impassioned assurance that the missionaries are not vindictive. Let us hope and pray that they will never become so, but will remain in the almost morbidly fair and just and gentle temper which is affording so much satisfaction to their brother and champion today. The following is from the New York Tribune of Christmas Eve. It comes from that journal's Tokyo correspondent. It has a strange and impudent sound, but the Japanese are but partially civilized as yet. When they become wholly civilized, they will not talk so. The missionary question, of course, occupies a foremost place in the discussion. It is now felt as essential that the Western powers take cognizance of the sentiment here that religious invasions of Oriental countries by powerful Western organizations are tantamount to filibustering expeditions and should not only be discounted but that stern measures should be adopted for their suppression. The feeling here is that the missionary organizations constitute a constant menace to peaceful international relations. Shall we? That is, shall we go on conferring our civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness or shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way and commit the new century to the game or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first? Would it not be prudent to get our civilization tools together and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of glass beads and theology and maxim guns and hymn books and trade gin and torches of progress and enlightenment, patent adjustable ones good to fire villages with upon occasion and balance the books and arrive at the profit and loss so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sell out the property and start a new civilization scheme on the proceeds? Extending the blessings of civilization to our brother who sits in the dark has been a good trade and has paid well on the whole, and there is money in it yet, if carefully worked, but not enough in my judgment to make any considerable risk advisable. The people that sit in darkness are getting to be too scarce, too scarce and too shy, and such darkness as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality and not dark enough for the game. The most of those people that sit in darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or profitable for us. We have been injudicious. The blessings of civilization trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth that the people who sit in darkness have noticed it. They have noticed it and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the blessings of civilization. Or they have begun to examine them. This is not well. The blessings of civilization are all right and a good commercial property. There could not be better in a dim light. In the right kind of light and at a proper distance, with the goods a little out of focus, they furnish this desirable exhibit to the gentlemen who sit in darkness. Love, law and order, justice, liberty, gentleness, equality, Christianity, honorable dealing, protection to the weak, mercy, education, temperance, and so on. There. Is it good? Sir, it is pie.  But not if we adulterate it. It is proper to be emphatic upon that point. This brand is strictly for export, apparently. Apparently. Privately and confidentially it is nothing of the kind. Privately and confidentially it is merely an outside cover, gay and pretty and attractive, displaying the special patterns of our civilization which we reserve for home consumption, while inside the bale is the actual thing that the customer sitting in darkness buys with his blood and tears and land and liberty. That actual thing is indeed civilization. But it is only for export. Is there a difference between the two brands? In some of the details yes. We all know that the business is being ruined. The reason is not far to seek. It is because our Mr. McKinley and Mr. Chamberlain and the Kaiser and the Tsar and the French have been exporting the actual thing with the outside cover left off. This is bad for the game. It shows that these new players of it are not sufficiently acquainted with it. It is a distress to look on and note the mismoves. They are so strange and so awkward. Mr. Chamberlain manufactures a war out of materials so inadequate and so fanciful that they make the boxes grieve and the gallery laugh, and he tries hard to persuade himself that it isn't purely a private raid for cash, but has a sort of dim, vague respectability about it somewhere, if he could only find the spot, and that by and by he can scour the flag clean again after he has finished dragging it through the mud and make it shine and flash in the vault of heaven once more as it had shone and flashed there a thousand years in the world's respect until he laid his unfaithful hand upon it. It is bad play, bad, for it exposes the actual thing to them that sit in darkness, and they say, what, Christian against Christian and only for money? Is this the case of magnanimity, forbearance, love, gentleness, mercy, protection of the weak? This strange and over-showy onslaught of an elephant upon a nest afield mice, on the pretext that the mice had squeaked an insolence at him, conduct which no self-respecting government could allow to pass unavanged, as Mr. Chamberlain said. Was that a good pretext in a small case, when it had not been a good pretext in a large one? For only recently Russia had affronted the elephant three times and survived alive and unsmitten. Is this civilization in progress? Is it something better than we already possess? These harriings and burnings and desert makings in the Transvaal, is this an improvement on our darkness? Is it perhaps possible that there are two kinds of civilizations, one home consumption and one for the heathen market? Then they that sit in darkness are troubled and shake their heads, and they read this extract from a letter of a British private recounting his exploits in one of Methuen's victories, some days before the affair of Machar Fontaine, and they are troubled again. We tore up the hill and into the trenchments, and the boars saw we had them, so they dropped their guns and went down on their knees and put up their hands clasped and begged for mercy, and we gave it them with the long spoon. The long spoon is the bayonet. See, Lloyds Weekly, London of those days, the same number and the same column contained some quite unconscious satire in the form of shocked and bitter upradings of the boars for their brutalities and inhumanities. Next to our heavy damage, the Kaiser went to playing the game without first mastering it. He lost a couple of missionaries in a riot in Shantung, and in his account he made an overcharge for them. China had to pay a hundred thousand dollars apiece for them in money, twelve miles of territory containing several millions of inhabitants and worth twenty million dollars, and to build a monument and also a Christian church, whereas the people of China could have been depended upon to remember the missionaries without the help of these expensive memorials. This was all bad play, bad, because it would not and could not and will not now or ever deceive the person sitting in darkness. He knows that it was an overcharge. He knows that a missionary is like any other man. He is worth merely what you can supply his place for and no more.  But a just emperor does not charge war prices for such. A diligent, intelligent, but obscure missionary and a diligent, intelligent country editor are worth much, and we know it, but they are not worth the earth. We esteem such an editor, and we are sorry to see him go, but when he goes we should consider twelve miles of territory in a church and a fortune overcompensation for his loss. I mean, if he was a Chinese editor, and we had to settle for him. It is no proper figure for an editor or a missionary. One can get shop-worn kings for less. It was bad play on the Kaiser's part. It got this property true, but it produced the Chinese revolt, the indignant uprising of China's traduced Patriots the Boxers. The results have been expensive to Germany and to the other disseminators of progress and the blessings of civilization. The Kaiser's claim was paid, yet it was bad play, for it could not fail to have an evil effect upon persons sitting in darkness in China. They would muse upon the event and be likely to say, Civilization is gracious and beautiful for such as its reputation, but can we afford it? There are rich China men, perhaps they could afford it, but this tax is not laid upon them, it is laid upon the peasants of Shantung. It is they that must pay this mighty sum, and their wages are but four cents a day. Is this a better civilization than ours, and holier, and higher, and nobler? Is not this rapacity? Is not this extortion? Would Germany charge America two hundred thousand dollars for two missionaries and shake the mailed fist in her face, and send warships and send soldiers and say, Seize twelve miles of territory worth twenty millions of dollars, as additional pay for the missionaries, and make those peasants build a monument to the missionaries, and a costly Christian church to remember them by? And later would Germany say to her soldiers, March through America and slay, giving no quarter, make the German face there, as has been our German face here, a terror for a thousand years, march through the great republic and slay, slay, slay, carving a road for our offended religion through its heart and bowels? Would Germany do like this to America, to England, to France, to Russia, or only to China the helpless, imitating the elephant's assault upon the field mice? Had we better invest in this civilization, this civilization which called Napoleon a buccaneer for carrying off Venice's bronze horses, but which steals our ancient astronomical instruments from our walls and goes looting like common bandits? That is, all the alien soldiers accept Americas, and, Americans again accepted, storms, frightened villages, and cables the result to glad journals at home every day, Chinese losses 450 killed, ours, one officer, and two men wounded, shall proceed against neighboring village tomorrow where a massacre is reported. Can we afford civilization? And, next, Russia must go and play the game injudiciously. She affronts England once or twice, with the person sitting in darkness observing and noting, by moral assistance of France and Germany she robs Japan of her hard-earned spoil, all swimming in Chinese blood, Port Arthur, with the person again observing and noting. Then she seizes Manchuria, raids its villages, and chokes its great river with the swollen corpses of countless massacred peasants, that astonished person still observing and noting, and perhaps he is saying to himself, it is yet another civilized power with its banner of the Prince of Peace in one hand and its loot-basket and its butcher knife in the other. Is there no salvation for us but to adopt civilization and lift ourselves down to its level? And by and by comes America, and our master of the game plays it badly, plays it as Mr. Chamberlain was playing it in South Africa. It was a mistake to do that. Also, it was one which was quite unlooked for in a master who was playing it so well in Cuba. In Cuba he was playing the usual and regular American game, and it was winning, for there is no way to beat it. The master, contemplating Cuba, said, Here is an oppressed and friendless little nation which is willing to fight to be free. We go, partners, and put up the strength of seventy million sympathizers and the resources of the United States. Play! Nothing but Europe combined could call that hand, and Europe cannot combine on anything. There, in Cuba, he was following our great traditions in a way which made us very proud of him, and proud of the deep dissatisfaction which his play was provoking in Continental Europe. Moved by a high inspiration, he threw out those stirring words which proclaimed that forcible annexation would be criminal aggression, and in that utterance fired another shot heard round the world. The memory of that fine saying will be outlived by the remembrance of no act of his but one, that he forgot it within the twelve months and its honorable gospel along with it. For presently came the Philippine temptation. It was strong, it was too strong, and he made that bad mistake. He played the European game, the Chamberlain game. It was a pity. It was a great pity, that error, that one grievous error, that irrevocable error. For it was the very place and time to play the American game again, and, at no cost, rich winnings to gather in, too. Rich and permanent, indestructible. A fortune transmissible forever to the children of the flag. Not land, not money, not dominion. No. Something worth many times more than that dross. Our share, the spectacle of a nation of long, harassed and persecuted slaves, set free through our influence, our austerity's share. The golden memory of that fair deed. The game was in our hands. If it had been played according to the American rules, Dewey would have sailed away from Manila as soon as he had destroyed the Spanish fleet, after putting up a sign on shore guaranteeing foreign property and life against damage by the Filipinos, and warning the powers that interference with the emancipated patriots would be regarded as an act unfriendly to the United States. The powers cannot combine in even a bad cause, and the sign would not have been molested. Dewey could have gone about his affairs elsewhere and left the competent Filipino army to starve out the little Spanish garrison and send it home, and the Filipino citizens to set up the form of government they might prefer, and deal with the suppliers and their doubtful acquisitions according to Filipino ideas of fairness and justice, ideas which have since been tested and found to be of as high an order as any that prevail in Europe or America. But we played the Chamberlain game, and lost the chance to add another Cuba and another honorable deed to our good record. The more we examine the mistake, the more clearly we perceive that it is going to be bad for the business. The person sitting in darkness is almost sure to say, There is something curious about this, curious and unaccountable. There must be two Americas, one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once captive's new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him, with nothing to found it on, then kills him to get his land. The truth is, the person sitting in darkness is saying things like that, and for the sake of the business we must persuade him to look at the Philippine matter in another and healthier way. We must arrange his opinions for him. I believe it can be done, for Mr. Chamberlain has arranged England's opinion of the South African matter and done it most cleverly and successfully. He presented the facts, some of the facts, and showed those confiding people what the facts meant. He did it statistically, which is a good way. He used the formula twice two are fourteen, and two from nine leaves thirty-five. Figures are effective. Figures will convince the elect. Now, my plan is a still bolder one than Mr. Chamberlain's, though apparently a copy of it. Let us be franker than Mr. Chamberlain. Let us audaciously present the whole of the facts, shirking none, then explain them according to Mr. Chamberlain's formula. This daring truthfulness will astonish and dazzle the person sitting in darkness, and he will take the explanation down before his mental vision has had time to get back into focus. Let us say to him, our case is simple. On the first day, Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet. This left the archipelago in the hands of its proper and rightful owners the Filipino nation. Their army numbered thirty thousand men, and they were competent to whip out or starve out the little Spanish garrison. Then the people could set up a government of their own devising. Our traditions required that Dewey should now set up his warning sign and go away. But the master of the game happened to think of another plan, the European plan. He acted upon it. This was, to send out an army ostensibly to help the native patriots put the finishing touch upon their long and plucky struggle for independence, but really to take their land away from them and keep it. That is, in the interest of progress and civilization. The plan developed stage by stage and quite satisfactorily. We entered into a military alliance with the trusting Filipinos, and they hemmed in Minola on the land side, and by their valuable help the place, with its garrison of eight thousand or ten thousand Spaniards, was captured. A thing which could not have been accomplished unaided at the time. We got their help by ingenuity. We knew they were fighting for independence, and that they had been at it for two years. We knew they supposed that we also were fighting in their worthy cause, just as we had helped the Cubans fight for Cuban independence, and we allowed them to go on thinking so. Until Minola was ours, and we could get along without them. Then we showed our hand. Of course, they were surprised, that was natural, surprised and disappointed. Disappointed and grieved. To them it looked un- American, uncharacteristic, foreign to our established traditions. And this was natural too, for we were only playing the American game in public, in private. It was the European. It was neatly done, very neatly, and it bewildered them. They could not understand it. For we had been so friendly, so affectionate even, with those simple-minded patriots. We, our own selves, had brought back out of exile their leader, their hero, their hope, their Washington. Aguinaldo brought him in a warship, in high honor, under the sacred shelter and hospitality of the flag. Brought him back, and restored him to his people, and got their moving and eloquent gratitude for it. Yes, we had been so friendly to them, and had heartened them up in so many ways. We had lent them guns and ammunition, advised with them, exchanged pleasant courtesies with them, placed our sick and wounded in their kindly care, entrusted our Spanish prisoners to their humane and honest hands, fought shoulder to shoulder with them against the common enemy, our own phrase, praised their courage, praised their gallantry, praised their mercifulness, praised their fine and honorable conduct, borrowed their trenches, borrowed strong positions which they had previously captured from the Spaniard, petted them, lied to them, officially proclaiming that our land and naval forces came to give them their freedom and displace the bad Spanish government, fooled them, used them until we needed them no longer, then derided the sucked orange, and threw it away. We kept the positions which we had beguiled them of, by and by we moved a force forward and overlapped Patriot ground, a clever thought for we needed trouble, and this would produce it. A Filipino soldier crossing the ground where no one had a right to forbid him was shot by our sentry. The badgered Patriots resented this with arms without waiting to know whether Aguinaldo, who was absent, would approve or not. Aguinaldo did not approve, but that availed nothing. What we wanted, in the interest of progress and civilization, was the archipelago, unencumbered by Patriots struggling for independence, and war was what we needed. We clinched our opportunity. It is Mr. Chamberlain's case over again, at least in its motive and intention, and we played the game as adroitly as he played it himself. At this point in our frank statement of fact to the person sitting in darkness we should throw in a little trade taffy about the blessings of civilization, for a change, and for the refreshment of his spirit. Then go on with our tale. We and the Patriots having captured Manila, Spain's ownership of the archipelago and her sovereignty over it were at an end, obliterated, annihilated, not a rag or shred of either remaining behind. It was then that we conceived the divinely humorous idea of buying both of these spectres from Spain. It is quite safe to confess this to the person sitting in the dark, since neither he nor any other sane person will believe it. In buying those ghosts for twenty millions we also contracted to take care of the friars and their accumulations. I think we also agreed to propagate leprosy and smallpox, but as to this there is doubt. But it is not important. Persons afflicted with the friars do not mind other diseases. With our treaty ratified, Manila subdued, and our ghosts secured, we had no further use for Aguinaldo and the owners of the archipelago. We forced a war and we have been hunting America's guest and ally through the woods and swamps ever since. At this point in the tale it will be well to boast a little of our war work and our heroisms in the field so as to make our performance look as fine as England's in South Africa. But I believe it will not be best to emphasize this too much. We must be cautious. Of course we must read the war telegrams to the person in order to keep up our frankness, but we can throw an air of humorousness over them, and that will modify their grim eloquence a little, and their rather indiscreet exhibitions of gory exaltation. Before reading to him the following display, heads of the dispatches of November 18, 1900, it will be well to practice on them in private first, so as to get the right tang of lightness and gaiety into them. Administration weary of protracted hostilities. Real war ahead for Filipino rebels. Rebels. Mumble that funny word. Don't let the person catch it distinctly. We'll show no mercy. Kitchener's plan adopted. Kitchener knows how to handle disagreeable people who are fighting for their homes and their liberties, but we must let on that we are merely imitating Kitchener and have no national interest in the matter, further than to get ourselves admired by the great family of nations in which Auguste Company, our master of the game, has bought a place for us in the back row. Of course we must not venture to ignore our General MacArthur's reports. Oh, why do they keep on printing those embarrassing things? We must drop them trippingly from the tongue and take the chances. During the last ten months our losses have been 268 killed and 750 wounded. Filipino loss 3,227 killed and 694 wounded. We must stand ready to grab the person sitting in darkness, for he will swoon away at this confession saying, Good God! those niggers spare their wounded, and the Americans massacre theirs. We must bring him to and coax him and coddle him and assure him that the ways of providence are best and that it would not become us to find fault with them, and then to show him that we are only imitators, not originators, we must read the following passage from the letter of an American soldier lad in the Philippines to his mother published in Public Opinion of Decora, Iowa, describing the finish of a victorious battle. We never left one alive. If one was wounded we would run our bayonets through him. Having now laid all the historical facts before the person sitting in darkness, we should bring him to again and explain them to him. We should say to him, they look doubtful, but in reality they are not. There have been lies, yes, but they were told in a good cause. We have been treacherous, but that was only in order that real good might come out of apparent evil. True we have crushed a deceived and confiding people, we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us, we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic, we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest, we have bought a shadow from an enemy that hadn't it to sell, we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty. We have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandits work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear not to follow. We have debauched America's honor and blackened her face before the world, but each detail was for the best. We know this. The head of every state and sovereignty in Christendom and ninety percent of every legislative body in Christendom, including our Congress and our fifty state legislators, are members not only of the church but also of the blessings of civilization trust. This world-girdling accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and justice cannot do an unright thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous thing, an unclean thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no uneasiness, it is all right. Now then, that will convince the person, it will see, it will restore the business. Also it will elect the master of the game to the vacant place in the trinity of our national gods, and there on their high thrones the three will sit age after age in the people's sight, each bearing the emblem of his service. Washington, the sword of the liberator, Lincoln, the slaves' broken chains, the master, the chains repaired. It will give the business a splendid new start, you will see. Everything is prosperous now, everything is just as we should wish it. We have got the archipelago, and we shall forgive it up. Also we have every reason to hope that we shall have an opportunity before very long to slip out of our congressional contract with Cuba and give her something better in the place of it. It is a rich country, and many of us are already beginning to see that the contract was a sentimental mistake. But now, right now, is the best time to do some profitable rehabilitating work that will set us up and make us comfortable and discourage gossip. We cannot conceal from ourselves that privately we are a little troubled about our uniform. It is one of our prides. It is acquainted with honor. It is familiar with great deeds and noble. We love it. We revere it. And so this errand it is on makes us uneasy. Our flag, another pride of ours, our chiefest. We have worshiped it so, and when we have seen it in far lands, glimpsing it unexpectedly in that strange sky, waving its welcome and benediction to us, we have caught our breath and uncovered our heads, and couldn't speak for a moment for the thought of what it was to us and the great ideals it stood for. Indeed, we must do something about these things. We must not have the flag out there and the uniform. They are not needed there. We can manage in some other way. England manages, as regards the uniform, and so can we. We have to send soldiers. We can't get out of that. But we can disguise them. It is the way England does in South Africa. Even Mr. Chamberlain himself takes pride in England's honourable uniform, and makes the army down there where an ugly and odious and appropriate disguise of yellow stuff such as quarantine flags are made of, and which are hoisted to warn the healthy away from unclean disease and repulsive death. This cloth is called khaki. We could adopt it. It is light, comfortable, grotesque, and deceives the enemy, for he cannot conceive of a soldier being concealed in it. And as for a flag for the Philippine province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one. Our states do it. We can have just our usual flag with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones. And we do not need that civil commission out there. Having no powers it has to grant them, and that kind of work cannot be effectively done by just anybody. An expert is required. Mr. Crocker can be spared. We do not want the United States represented there, but only the game. By help of these suggested amendments, progress and civilization in that country can have a boom, and it will take in the persons who are sitting in darkness, and we can resume business at the old stand. Mark Twain End of To the Person Sitting in Darkness Recorded by John Greenman Section 7 of Anti-Imperialist Writings This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain Training That Pays Newspaper article from the New York Times, March 17, 1901 Mark Twain, on Training That Pays, speaks at the supper of the Male Teachers Association. He says that he intended to build 65 libraries, but changed his mind. The regular monthly supper of the Male Teachers Association of the City of New York was held at the Hotel Albert, East 11th Street and University Place last evening. About 150 teachers from all the boroughs were present. George H. Chatfield, the President of the Association, was the Toastmaster, and the principal speakers were State Superintendent of Schools Charles H. Skinner, and Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain. Dr. Skinner was the first speaker introduced, and he spoke on patriotism for the young. He told of the patriotic exercises used in all the public schools at least once a week. Among other things, he said, our schools must make our citizens, and our richest assets are our children. In these times, under present conditions, citizenship means a great responsibility, a very great responsibility to put on our boys. Our Republic has changed its place from a doubtful position in the line to the first place among the nations of the earth. We have told the world that we care not for contest, but that barbarism cannot be practiced in the Western Hemisphere. Today we do not care to own Cuba, Puerto Rico, or the Philippines, but we do want to keep them from the dark rule of a barbarian people. Mr. Clemens was then introduced, his subject being training that pays. In part, he said, We cannot all agree. That is most fortunate. If we could all agree life would be too dull. I believe, if we did all agree, I would take my departure before my appointed time. That is, if I had the courage to do so. I do agree in part with what Mr. Skinner has said. In fact, more than I usually agree with other people. I believe that there are no private citizens in a Republic. Every man is an official. Above all, he is a policeman. He does not need to wear a helmet and brass buttons, but his duty is to look after the enforcement of the laws. If patriotism had been taught in the schools years ago, the country would not be in the position it is in today. Mr. Skinner is better satisfied with the present conditions than I am. I would teach patriotism in the schools and teach it this way. I would throw out the old maxim, my country right or wrong, etc., and instead I would say, my country when she is right. I would not take my patriotism from my neighbor or from Congress. I should teach the children in the schools that there are certain ideals, and one of them is that all men are created free and equal. Another, that the proper government is that which exists by the consent of the governed. If Mr. Skinner and I had to take care of the public schools, I would raise up a lot of patriots who would get into trouble with his. I should also teach the rising patriot that if he ever became the government of the United States and made a promise, that he should keep it. I will not go any further into politics as I would get excited, and I don't like to get excited. I prefer to remain calm. I have been a teacher all my life, and never got a cent for teaching." The speaker then cited some incidents from his boyhood life which he said he had later incorporated in his books. The Fence Whitewashing incident in Tom Sawyer, he said, brought him in four thousand dollars in the end, when he never expected to get anything for teaching the other boys how to whitewash way back in eighteen forty-nine. I have a benevolent faculty, continued the speaker. It does not always show, but it is there. We have had some millionaires who gave money to colleges. Now we have Mr. Carnegie building sixty-five new libraries. There is an educator for you on a large scale. I was going to do it myself, but when I found out it would cost over five millions, I changed my mind. As I was afraid, it would bankrupt me. When I found out Mr. Carnegie was going to do it, I told him he could have my ideas gratis. I said to him, are the books that are going to be put into the new libraries on a high moral plane? If they are not, I told him he had better build the libraries, and I would write the books. With the wealth I would get out of writing the books, I could build libraries, and then he could write books. I am glad that Mr. Carnegie has done this magnificent thing, and as the newspapers have suggested, I hope that other rich men will follow his example and continue to do so until it becomes a habit they cannot break. Among the other speakers were Sidney C. Womsley, Dr. Myron T. Scudder, and Magnus Gross. End of Training that Pays. Recording by John Greenman. Section 8 of Anti-Imperialist Writings. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman. Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain. To My Missionary Critics by Mark Twain. I have received many newspaper cuttings. Also, letters from several clergymen. Also, a note from the Reverend Dr. Judson Smith, corresponding Secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions, all of a like tenor. All saying, substantially, what is said in the cutting here copied. An Apology Due from Mr. Clemens. The evidence of the past day or two should induce Mark Twain to make for the Amen Corner and formulate a prompt apology for his scathing attack on the Reverend Dr. Amant, the veteran Chinese missionary. The result was based on a Peking dispatch to the New York Sun, which said that Dr. Amant had collected from the Chinese in various places damages thirteen times in excess of actual losses. So Mark Twain charged Mr. Amant with bully-ragging, extortion, and things. A Peking dispatch to the Sun yesterday, however, explains that the amount collected was not thirteen times the damage sustained, but one-third in excess of the indemnities, and that the blunder was due to a cable error in transmission. The one-third got converted into thirteen. Yesterday the Reverend Judson Smith, Secretary of the American Board, received a dispatch from Dr. Amant, calling attention to the cable blunder and declaring that all the collections which he made were approved by the Chinese officials. The fractional amount that was collected in excess of actual losses, he explains, is being used for the support of widows and orphans.  From the charge the underpinning has been knocked out. To Dr. Amant, Mr. Clemens has done an injustice which is gross but unintentional. If Mark Twain is the man we take him to be, he won't be long in filing a retraction, plus an apology. I have no prejudice against apologies. I trust I shall never withhold one when it is due. I trust I shall never even have a disposition to do so. These letters and newspaper paragraphs are entitled to my best attention. Respect for their writers and for the humane feeling which has prompted their utterances requires this of me. It may be barely possible that if these requests for an apology had reached me before the twentieth of February I might have had a sort of qualified chance to apologize, but on that day appeared the two little cable-grams referred to in the newspaper-cutting copied above, one from the Reverend Dr. Smith to the Reverend Dr. Amant, the other from Dr. Amant to Dr. Smith, and my small chance died then. In my opinion these cable-grams ought to have been suppressed, for it seems clear that they give Dr. Amant's case entirely away. Still that is only an opinion, and may be a mistake. It will be best to examine the case from the beginning by the light of the documents connected with it. Exhibit A. This is a dispatch from Mr. Chamberlain. Note, testimony of the manager of the Sun, chief of the Sun's correspondent staff in Peking. It appeared in the Sun last Christmas Eve, and in referring to it, hereafter, I will call it the C.E. dispatch for short. The Reverend Mr. Amant of the American Board of Foreign Missions has returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting indemnities for damages done by boxers. Everywhere he went he compelled the Chinese to pay. He says that all his native Christians are now provided for. He had seven hundred of them under his charge, and three hundred were killed. He has collected three hundred teals for each of these murders, and has compelled full payment for all the property belonging to Christians that was destroyed. He also assessed fines amounting to thirteen times. Note, cable error for thirteen times read one third. This correction was made by Dr. Amant in his brief cablegram, published February twenty, above referred to. The Amount of the Indemnity This money will be used for the propagation of the Gospel. Mr. Amant declares that the compensation he has collected is moderate when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics who demand, in addition to money, head for head. They collect five hundred teals for each murder of a Catholic. In the Wenxiu country six hundred and eighty Catholics were killed, and for this the European Catholics here demand seven hundred and fifty thousand strings of cash and six hundred and eighty heads. In the course of a conversation Mr. Amant referred to the attitude of the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said, I deny emphatically that the missionaries are vindictive, that they generally looted, or that they have done anything since the siege that the circumstances did not demand. I criticize the Americans. The soft hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the Germans. If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take advantage of it. In an article addressed to the person sitting in darkness published in the North American Review for February, I made some comments upon this CE dispatch. In an open letter to me from the Reverend Dr. Smith, published in the Tribune of February 15th, doubt is cast upon the authenticity of the dispatch. Up to the twentieth of February this doubt was an important factor in the case. Dr. Amant's brief cablegram, published on that date, took the importance all out of it. In the open letter Dr. Smith quotes this passage from a letter from Dr. Amant dated November 13th. The italics are mine. This time I proposed to settle affairs without the aid of soldiers or legations. This cannot mean two things, but only one, that previously he had collected by arm force. Also in the open letter Dr. Smith quotes some praises of Dr. Amant and the Reverend Mr. Tewkesbury, furnished by the Reverend Dr. Sheffield and says, Dr. Sheffield is not accustomed to speak thus of thieves or extortioners or braggarts. What can he mean by those vigorous expressions? Can he mean that the first two would be applicable to a missionary who should collect from B, with the aid of soldiers, indemnities possibly due by A, and upon occasion go out looting? Exhibit B. Testimony of George Lynch, endorsed as entirely trustworthy by the Tribune and the Herald, war correspondent in the Cuban and South African wars, and in the march upon Peking for the rescue of the legations. The italics are mine. When the soldiers were prohibited from looting, no such prohibitions seemed to operate with the missionaries. For instance, the Reverend Mr. Tewkesbury held a great sale of looted goods, which lasted several days. A day or two after the relief, when looking for a place to sleep in, I met the Reverend Mr. Amant of the American Board of Foreign Missions. He told me he was going to take possession of the house of a wealthy China man, who was an old enemy of his, as he had interfered much in the past with his missionary labors in Peking. A couple of days afterward he did so, and held a great sale of his enemy's effects. I bought a sable cloak at it for one hundred and twenty-five dollars and a couple of statues of Buddha. As the stock became depleted, it was replenished by the efforts of his converts, who were ransacking the houses in the neighborhood. New York Herald, February 18. It is Dr. Smith, not I, who has suggested that persons who act in this way are thieves and extortioners. Exhibit C. Sir Robert Hart in the fortnightly review for January 1901. This witness has been for many years the most prominent and important Englishman in China, and bears an irreproachable reputation for moderation, fairness, and truth-speaking. In closing a description of the revolting scenes which followed the occupation of Peking when the Christian armies, with the proud exception of the American soldiery, let us be thankful for that, gave themselves up to a ruthless orgy of robbery and manipulation, he says. The italics are mine. And even some missionaries took such a leading part in spoiling the Egyptians, for the greater glory of God, that a bystander was heard to say, for a century to come Chinese converts will consider looting and vengeance Christian virtues. It is Dr. Smith, not I, who has suggested that persons who act in this way are thieves and extortioners. According to Mr. Lynch and Mr. Martin, another war correspondent, Dr. Amant helped to spoil several of those Egyptians. Mr. Martin took a photograph of the scene. It was reproduced in the herald. I have it. Exhibit D. In a brief reply to Dr. Smith's open letter to me, I said this in the Tribune. I am italicizing several words for a purpose. Whenever he, Dr. Smith, can produce from the Reverend Mr. Amant an assertion that the son's character-blasting dispatch was not authorized by him, and whenever Dr. Smith can buttress Mr. Amant's disclaimer with a confession from Mr. Chamberlain, the head of the Lafayne News Service in China, that that dispatch was a false invention and unauthorized, the case against Mr. Amant will fall at once to the ground. Exhibit E. Brief cablegrams, referred to above, which passed between Dr. Smith and Dr. Amant, and were published on February 20. Amant P. King. Reported December 24, your collecting 13 times actual losses, using for propagating the Gospel. Are these statements true? Cable specific answer. Smith. Statement untrue. Collected 1-3 for church expenses, additional actual damages, now supporting widows and orphans. Publication 13 times blunder cable. All collections received approval Chinese officials, who are urging further settlements same line. Amant. Only two questions are asked. Specific answers required. No perilous wanderings among the other details of the unhappy dispatch desired. Exhibit F. Letter from Dr. Smith to me, dated March 8. The italics are mine. They tag inaccuracies of statement. Permit me to call your attention to the marked paragraphs in the enclosed papers, and to ask you to note their relation to the two conditions named in your letter to the New York Times of February 15. The first is Dr. Amant's denial of the truth of the dispatch in the New York Sun, of December 24, on which your criticisms of him in the North American Review of February were founded. The second is a correction by the Sun's special correspondent in P. King of the dispatch printed in the Sun of December 24. Since as you state in your letter to the Tribune the case against Mr. Amant would fall to the ground if Mr. Amant denied the truth of the Sun's first dispatch and if the Sun's news agency in P. King also declared that dispatch false and these two conditions have thus been fulfilled, I am sure that upon having these facts brought to your attention you will gladly withdraw the criticisms that were founded on a cable blunder. I think Dr. Smith ought to read me more carefully, then he would not make so many mistakes. Within the narrow space of two paragraphs totaling eleven lines he has scored nine departures from fact out of a possible nine-and-a-half. Now is that parliamentary? I do not treat him like that. Whenever I quote him I am particular not to do him the least wrong or make him say anything he did not say. One. Mr. Amant doesn't deny the truth of the C. E. dispatch, he merely changes one of its phrases without materially changing the meaning and, immaterially, corrects a cable blunder which correction I accept. He was asked no question about the other four fifths of the C. E. dispatch. Two. I said nothing about special correspondence, I named the right and responsible man Mr. Chamberlain. The correction referred to is a repetition of the one I have just accepted which, immaterially, changes thirteen times to one-third extra tax. Three. I did not say anything about the Sun's News Agency, I said Chamberlain. I have every confidence in Mr. Chamberlain but I am not personally acquainted with the others. Four. Once more Mr. Amant didn't deny the truth of the C. E. dispatch but merely made unimportant ammentations of a couple of its many details. Five. I did not say if Mr. Amant denied the truth of the C. E. dispatch, I said if he would assert that the dispatch was not authorized by him. For example, I did not suppose that the charge that the Catholic missionaries wanted 680 Chinamen beheaded was true but I did want to know if Dr. Amant personally authorized that statement and the others as coming from his lips. Another detail, one of my conditions was that Mr. Chamberlain must not stop with confessing that the C. E. was a false invention, he must also confess that it was unauthorized. Dr. Smith has left out that large detail. Six. The Sun's News Agency did not declare the C. E. dispatch false but confined itself to correcting one unimportant detail of its long list, the change of 13 times to one-third extra. Seven. The two conditions have not been fulfilled far from it. Eight. Those details labeled facts are only fancies. Nine. Finally my criticisms were by no means confined to that detail of the C. E. dispatch which we now accept as having been a cable blunder. Setting to one side these nine departures from fact I find that what is left of the eleven lines is straight and true. I am not blaming Dr. Smith for these discrepancies, it would not be right, it would not be fair. I make the proper allowances. He has not been a journalist as I have been, a trade wherein a person is brought to book by the rest of the press so often for divergencies that, by and by, he gets to be almost morbidly afraid to indulge in them. It is so with me. I always have the disposition to tell what is not so. I was born with it. We all have it. But I try not to do it now, because I have found out that it is unsafe. But with the doctor, of course, it is different. Exhibit G. I wanted to get at the whole of the facts as regards the C. E. dispatch, and so I wrote to China for them when I found that the board was not going to do it. But I am not allowed to wait. It seemed quite within the possibilities that a full detail of the facts might furnish me a chance to make an apology to Mr. Ament, a chance which, I give you my word, I would have honestly used, and not abused. But it is no matter. If the board is not troubled about the bulk of that lurid dispatch, why should I be? I answered the apology urging letters of several clergymen with the information that I had written to China for the details, and said I thought it was the only sure way of getting into a decision to do fair and full justice to all concerned. But a couple of them replied that it was not a matter that could wait. That is to say, groping your way out of a jungle in the dark with guesses and conjectures is better than a straight march out in the sunlight of fact. It seems a curious idea. However, those two clergymen were in a large measure right, from their point of view, and the boards, which is putting it in the form of a couple of questions. One, did Dr. Ament collect the assessed damages and thirteen times over? The answer is he did not. He collected only a third over. Two, did he apply the third to the propagation of the gospel? The answer is this correction. He applied it to church expenses. Part or all of the outlay, it appears, goes to supporting widows and orphans. It may be that church expenses and supporting widows and orphans are not part of the machinery for propagating the gospel. I suppose they were, but it isn't any matter. I prefer this phrasing. It is not so blunt as the other. In the opinion of the two clergymen and of the board, these two points are the only important ones in the whole CE dispatch. I accept that.  Exhibit H. The two clergymen and the board are quite content with Dr. Ament's answers upon the two points. Upon the first point of the two, my own viewpoint may be indicated by a question. Did Dr. Ament collect from be, whether by compulsion or simple demand, even so much as a penny in payment for murders or depredations without knowing beyond question that be and not another committed the murders or the depredations? Or in other words, did Dr. Ament ever, by chance or through ignorance, make the innocent pay the debts of the guilty? In the article entitled To the Person Sitting in Darkness, I put forward that point in a paragraph taken from McCallum's imaginary history. Exhibit I.  Also, they make some white village pay deceased heirs the full cash value of deceased together with full cash value of the property destroyed. They also make the village pay, in addition, thirteen times. Note, for thirteen times, read one-third M.T. End of note. The value of that property into a fund for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of man, it is their idea that it is only fair and right that the innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty, and that it is better that ninety and nine innocent should suffer than that one guilty person should escape. We all know that Dr. Ament did not bring suspected persons into a newly organized court and try them by just and fair Christian and civilized methods, but proclaimed his conditions and collected damages from the innocent and the guilty alike without any court proceedings at all. Note, in civilized countries, if a mob destroy property in a town, the damage is paid out of the town treasury, and no taxpayer suffers a disproportionate share of the burden. The mayor is not privileged to distribute the burden according to his private notions, sparing himself and his friends, and fleecing persons he holds a spite against, as in the Orient, and the citizen who is too poor to be a taxpayer pays no part of the fine at all. End of note. That he himself and not the villagers made the conditions we learn from his letter of November 13th, already quoted from, the one in which he remarked that, upon that occasion, he brought no soldiers with him. The italics are mine. After our conditions were known, many villagers came of their own accord and brought their money with them. Not all, but many. The Board really believes that those hunted and harried paupers out there were not only willing to strip themselves to pay boxer damages, whether they owed them or not, but were sentimentally eager to do it. Mr. Mant says, in his letter, the villagers were extremely grateful because I brought no foreign soldiers and were glad to settle on the terms proposed. Some of those people know more about theology than they do about human nature. I do not remember encountering even a Christian who was glad to pay money he did not owe, and as for a Chinaman doing it, why, dear me, the thing is unthinkable. We have all seen Chinaman, many Chinaman, but not that kind. It is a new kind, an invention of the Board, and soldiers concerning the collections. Was the one-third extra? Money due? No. Was it a theft, then? Putting aside the one-third extra, what was the remainder of the exacted indemnity if collected from persons not known to owe it, and without Christian and civilized forms of procedure? Was it theft? Was it robbery? In America it would be that. In Christian Europe it would be that. I have great confidence in Dr. Smith's judgment concerning this detail, and he calls it theft and extortion, even in China, for he was talking about the thirteen times at the time that he gave it that strong name. Note, in his open letter Dr. Smith cites Dr. Ament's letter of November 13th, which contains an account of Dr. Ament's collecting tour, then Dr. Smith makes this comment, nothing is said of securing thirteen times the amount of the losses. Further down Dr. Smith quotes praises of Dr. Ament and his work from a letter of the Reverend Dr. Sheffield, and adds this comment, Dr. Sheffield is not accustomed to speak thus in praise of thieves or extortioners or braggards, the references to the thirteen times extra tax. End of note. It is his idea that when you make guilty and innocent villagers pay the appraised damages, and then make them pay thirteen times that besides the thirteen stand for theft and extortion, then what does one-third extra stand for? Will he give that one-third a name? Is it modified theft and extortion? Is that it? The girl who was rebuked for having born an illegitimate child excused herself by saying, but it is such a little one. When the thirteen times extra was alleged it stood for theft and extortion in Dr. Smith's eyes, and he was shocked. But when Dr. Ament showed that he had taken only a third extra instead of thirteen-fold, Dr. Smith was relieved, content, happy. I declare I cannot imagine why. That editor, quoted at the head of this article, was happy about it too. I cannot think why. He thought I ought to make for the amen corner and formulate a prompt apology. To whom and for what? It is too deep for me. To Dr. Smith the thirteen-fold extra clearly stood for theft and extortion, and he was right, distinctly right, indisputably right. He manifestly thinks that when it got scaled away down to a mere one-third a little thing like that was something other than theft and extortion. Why? Only the Board knows. I will try to explain this difficult problem so that the Board can get an idea of it. If a pauper owes me a dollar, and I catch him unprotected and make him pay me fourteen dollars, thirteen of it is theft and extortion. If I make him pay only a dollar and a thirty-three and a third cents, the thirty-three and a third cents are theft and extortion just the same. I will put it in another way, still simpler. If a man owes me one dog, any kind of a dog, the breed is of no consequence, and I—but let it go. The Board would never understand it. It can't understand these involved and difficult things. But if the Board could understand, then I could furnish some more instruction, which is this. The one-third, obtained by theft and extortion, is tainted money, and cannot be purified even by defraying church expenses and supporting widows and orphans with it. It has to be restored to the people it was taken from. Also there is another view of these things. By our Christian code of morals and laws, the whole one dollar and thirty-three and one-third cents, if taken from a man not formally proven to have committed the damage the dollar represents, is theft and extortion. It cannot be honestly used for any purpose at all. It must be handed back to the man it was taken from. Is there no way, then, to justify these thefts and extortions, and make them clean and fair and honourable? Yes, there is. It can be done. It has been done. It continues to be done by revising the Ten Commandments and bringing them down to date, for use in pagan lands. For example, thou shalt not steal, except when it is the custom of the country. This way out is recognised and approved by all the best authorities including the Board. I will cite witnesses. This newspaper cutting above. Dr. Ament declares that all the collections which he made were approved by the Chinese officials. The editor is satisfied. Dr. Ament's cable to Dr. Smith. All collections received approval of Chinese officials. Dr. Ament is satisfied. Letters from eight clergymen. All to the same effect. Dr. Ament merely did as the Chinese do. So they are satisfied. Mr. Ward of the Independent. The Reverend Dr. Washington Gladden. I have mislaid the letters of these gentlemen and cannot quote their words, but they are of the satisfied. The Reverend Dr. Smith in his open letter published in The Tribune. The whole procedure, Dr. Ament's, is in accordance with the custom among the Chinese of holding a village responsible for wrongs suffered in that village and especially making the head man of the village accountable for wrongs committed there. Dr. Smith is satisfied, which means that the Board is satisfied. The head man, why then, this poor rascal, innocent or guilty, must pay the whole bill if he cannot squeeze it out of his poor devil neighbors. But indeed he can be depended upon to try, even to the skinning them of their last brass farthing, their last rag of clothing, the last ounce of food. He can be depended upon to get the indemnity out of them, though it cost stripes and blows, blood, tears and flesh. The Tale of the King and His Treasurer. How strange and remote and romantic and oriental and Arabian nighty it all seems, and is. It brings back the old forgotten tales, and we hear the King say to His Treasurer, Bring me thirty thousand gold tomones. Allah preserve us, Sire, the Treasury is empty. Do you hear? Bring the money, in ten days, or else, send me your head in a basket. I hear in a bay. The Treasurer summons the head man of a hundred villages and says to one, Bring me a hundred gold tomones. To another, bring me five hundred. To another, bring a thousand. In ten days your head is the forfeit.  Ah, high and mighty Lord, be merciful to our hard-pressed villagers. They are poor, they are naked, they starve. Oh, these impossible sums, even the half. Go, grind it out of them, crush it out of them, turn the blood of the fathers, the tears of the mothers, the milk of the babes, to money, or take the consequences. Have you heard? His will be done, who is the fount of