Part 4 (2/2)

BY MARK TWAIN

When Susy was thirteen, and was a slender little ed brown hair down her back, and was perhaps the busiest bee in the household hive, by reason of the manifold studies, health exercises and recreations she had to attend to, she secretly, and of her own motion, and out of love, added another task to her labors--the writing of a biography of ht, and kept her record hidden After a little, the mother discovered it and filched it, and let me see it; then told Susy what she had done, and how pleased I was, and how proud I remember that time with a deep pleasure I had had compliments before, but none that touched me like this; none that could approach it for value in my eyes It has kept that place always since I have had no compliment, no praise, no tribute from any source, that was so precious to me as this one was and still is As I read it _now_, after all these s ht er and hasty hand that sketched it and scrawled it will not touch ain--and I feel as the humble and unexpectant must feel when their eyes fall upon the edict that raises them to the ranks of the noble

Yesterday while I was ru in a pile of ancient note-books of mine which I had not seen for years, I caraphy It is quite evident that several ti-past days, I was posing for the biography In fact, I clearly re that--and I also re a very sood deal of an air, at the breakfast-table one , and that Susy observed to herthat for the biography

I cannot bring e any line or word in Susy's sketch of es from it now and then just as they came in their quaint simplicity out of her honest heart, which was the beautiful heart of a child What corace of its ohich nized laws of literature, if it choose, and yet be literature still, and worthy of hospitality I shall print the whole of this little biography, before I have done with it--every word, every sentence

The spelling is frequently desperate, but it was Susy's, and it shall stand I love it, and cannot profane it To old To correct it would alloy it, not refine it It would spoil it It would take from it its freedom and flexibility and ant I a the best she could--and nothing could better it for raphy in 1885, when I was in the fiftieth year of ins in this way:

We are a very happy family We consist of Papa, Ma about, and I shall have no trouble in not knohat to say about hi character

But wait a minute--I will return to Susy presently

In the matter of slavish imitation, e man is destitute of independence of opinion He is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor's opinion is and slavishly adopt it A generation ago, I found out that the latest review of a book was pretty sure to be just a reflection of the _earliest_ review of it; that whatever the first reviewer found to praise or censure in the book would be repeated in the latest reviewer's report, with nothing fresh added Thereforemy book, in manuscript, to Mr Howells, when he was editor of the ”Atlantic Monthly,” so that he could prepare a review of it at leisure I kneould say the truth about the book--I also knew that he would find more merit than demerit in it, because I already knew that that was the condition of the book I allowed no copy of it to go out to the press until after Mr Howells's notice of it had appeared That book was always safe There wasn't a e to find anything in the book which Mr Howells had not found--there wasn't a h to say a brave and original thing about the book on his own responsibility

I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, raded of all trades, and that it has no real value--certainly no large value When Charles Dudley Warner and I were about to bring out ”The Gilded Age,” the editor of the ”Daily Graphic”

persuadedme his word of honor that no notice of it would appear in his paper until after the ”Atlantic Monthly” notice should have appeared This reptile published a review of the book within three days afterward I could not really coiven ht to have required of hi substantial I believe his notice did not deal mainly with the merit of the book, or the lack of it, but with ed that I had used my reputation to play a swindle upon the public; that Mr

Warner had written as much as half of the book, and that I had used ive it currency; a currency--so the critic averred--which it could not have acquired without rave fraud upon the people The ”Graphic” was not an authority upon any subject whatever It had a sort of distinction, in that it was the first and only illustrated daily newspaper that the world had seen; but it ithout character; it was poorly and cheaply edited; its opinion of a book or of any other work of art was of no consequence Everybody knew this, yet all the critics in America, one after the other, copied the ”Graphic's” criticisy, and left reat Chicago ”Tribune,” the most important journal in the Middle West, was not able to invent anything fresh, but adopted the view of the hue and all

However, let it go It is the will of God that we ressmen, and humorists, and weinto criticis At the worst, criticis more than a crime, and I a toward all this time is this: the first critic that ever had occasion to describe my personal appearance littered his description with foolish and inexcusable errors whose aggregate furnished the result that I was distinctly and distressingly unhandsome That description floated around the country in the papers, and was in constant use and wear for a quarter of a century It seee to me that apparently no critic in the country could be found who could look at e to take up his pen and destroy that lie That lie began its course on the Pacific coast, in 1864, and it likened me in personal appearance to Petroleu For twenty-five years afterward, no critic could furnish a description ofin Nasby to help out ood fellow, but in h about any e those persons with rese Nasby It hurts me to the heart I was always handso been a distress to o onthis wearisome mistake, year after year, when there was no foundation for it Even when a critic wanted to be particularly friendly and coo beyond my clothes He never ventured beyond that old safe frontier When he had finished with s, the cos he could risk Then he dropped back on Nasby

Yesterday I found this clipping in the pocket of one of those ancient memoranduo, and both the paper and the ink are yelloith the bitterness that I felt in that old day when I clipped it out to preserve it and brood over it, and grieve about it I will copy it here, to wit:

A correspondent of the Philadelphia ”Press,” writing of one of Schuyler Colfax's receptions, says of our Washi+ngton correspondent: ”Mark Twain, the delicate humorist, was present: quite a lion, as he deserves to be Mark is a bachelor, faultless in taste, whose snowy vest is suggestive of endless quarrels with Washi+ngton washerwomen; but the heroism of Mark is settled for all time, for such purity and sht have been stolen from some Turkish hare else were more likely than that In form and feature he bears some resemblance to the immortal Nasby; but whilst Petroleuolden, a, blonde”

Let us return to Susy's biography now, and get the opinion of one who is unbiassed:

_Froraphy_

Papa's appearance has been described ray hair, not any too thick or any too long, but just right; a Roreatly improves the beauty of his features; kind blue eyes and a small mustache He has a wonderfully shaped head and profile He has a very good figure--in short, he is an extrodinarily fine looking man All his features are perfect, except that he hasn't extrodinary teeth His complexion is very fair, and he doesn't ware a beard He is a very good ot a temper, but we all of us have in this family He is the loveliest man I ever saw or ever hope to see--and oh, so absent-htful stories Clara and I used to sit on each arm of his chair and listen while he told us stories about the pictures on the wall

I re days vividly They were a difficult and exacting audience--those little creatures

Along one side of the library, in the Hartford home, the bookshelves joined the mantelpiece--in fact there were shelves on both sides of the mantelpiece On these shelves, and on the mantelpiece, stood various orna of a cat's head, at the other end was a head of a beautiful young girl, life-size--called Emmeline, because she looked just about like that--an impressionist water-color Between the one picture and the other there were twelve or fifteen of the bric-a-brac things alreadyMedusa” Every now and then the children required me to construct a romance--always impromptu--not a moet all that bric-a-brac and the three pictures I had to start alith the cat and finish with Ee, end-for-end It was not permissible to introduce a bric-a-brac ornament into the story out of its place in the procession

These bric-a-bracs were never allowed a peaceful day, a reposeful day, a restful Sabbath In their lives there was no Sabbath, in their lives there was no peace; they knew no existence but a monotonous career of violence and bloodshed In the course of time, the bric-a-brac and the pictures shoear It was because they had had so many and such tumultuous adventures in their romantic careers