by Mark Twain
Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do but
sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper, Horace
Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand on obscure
lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would otherwise clack
eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences into respectful
hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas and isms. That
is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my gray hairs. Let
me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old Red Sandstone
Period and give Tone to an intellectual entertainment twice a week, and
be so reported, and my happiness will be complete. Those men have been
my envy for long, long time. And no memories of my life are so pleasant
as my reminiscence of their long and honorable career in the Tone-
imparting service. I can recollect that first time I ever saw them on
the platforms just as well as I can remember the events of yesterday.
Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left, and Thomas
Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock sat between
them. This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion of the
state' funeral of George Washington in New York. It was a great day,
that--a great day, and a very, very sad one. I remember that Broadway
was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to where the
City Hall now stands. The next time I saw these gentlemen officiate was
at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the
sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. Horace Greeley occupied one side
of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the
other. There were other Tone-imparters attendant upon the two chiefs,
but I have forgotten their names now. Horace Greeley, gray-haired and
beaming, was in sailor costume--white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the
breast, large neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty
sailor knot, broad turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black
little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two
gallant long ribbons. Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on
benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr. Greeley, and made
him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the
honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he was so ingeniously
representing. I shall never forget him. Mr. Cooper was dressed as a
general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike. I
neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers and sailors
in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from Boston--this
was during the war of 1812. At the grand national reception of
Lafayette, in 1824, Horace Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper to
the left. The other Tone-imparters of the day are sleeping the sleep of
the just now. I was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper,
and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor of
French liberty, in 1848. Then I never saw them any more until here
lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run down
every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and
several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the platform;"
and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the phonographic
report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other
distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say to myself,
"Thank God, I was present." Thus I have been enabled to see these
substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone to
lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures on
stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on miscegenation,
on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?" on, veterinary matters, on all
kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics; and have seen them give
tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the Siamese Twins, the Great
Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original Jacobs. Whenever somebody
is to lecture on a subject not of general interest, I know that my
venerated Remains of the Old Red Sandstone Period will be on the
platform; whenever a lecturer is to appear whom nobody has heard of
before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know that the real
benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage of, and that they
will be on the platform (and in the bills) as an advertisement; and
whenever any new and obnoxious deviltry in philosophy, morals, or
politics is to be sprung upon the people, I know perfectly well that
these intrepid old heroes will be on the platform too, in the interest
of full and free discussion, and to crush down all narrower and less
generous souls with the solid dead weight of their awful respectability.
And let us all remember that while these inveterate and imperishable
presiders (if you please) appear on the platform every night in the year
as regularly as the volunteered piano from Steinway's or Chickering's,
and have bolstered up and given tone to a deal of questionable merit and
obscure emptiness in their time, they have also diversified this
inconsequential service by occasional powerful uplifting and upholding of
great progressive ideas which smaller men feared to meddle with or
countenance.
OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC
[From the Buffalo Express, Saturday, May 14, 1870.]
New YORK, May 10.
The Richardson-McFarland jury had been out one hour and fifty minutes.
A breathless silence brooded over court and auditory--a silence and a
stillness so absolute, notwithstanding the vast multitude of human beings
packed together there, that when some one far away among the throng under
the northeast balcony cleared his throat with a smothered little cough it
startled everybody uncomfortably, so distinctly did it grate upon the
pulseless air. At that imposing moment the bang of a door was heard,
then the shuffle of approaching feet, and then a sort of surging and
swaying disorder among the heads at the entrance from the jury-room told
them that the Twelve were coming. Presently all was silent again, and
the foreman of the jury rose and said:
"Your Honor and Gentleman: We, the jury charged with the duty of
determining whether the prisoner at the bar, Daniel McFarland, has been
guilty of murder, in taking by surprise an unarmed man and shooting him
to death, or whether the prisoner is afflicted with a sad but
irresponsible insanity which at times can be cheered only by violent
entertainment with firearms, do find as follows, namely:
That the prisoner, Daniel McFarland, is insane as above described.
Because:
1. His great grandfather's stepfather was tainted with insanity, and
frequently killed people who were distasteful to him. Hence, insanity is
hereditary in the family.
2. For nine years the prisoner at the bar did not adequately support his
family. Strong circumstantial evidence of insanity.
3. For nine years he made of his home, as a general thin
g, a poor-house;
sometimes (but very rarely) a cheery, happy habitation; frequently the
den of a beery, drivelling, stupefied animal; but never, as far as
ascertained, the abiding place of a gentleman. These be evidences of
insanity.
4. He once took his young unmarried sister-in-law to the museum; while
there his hereditary insanity came upon him to such a degree that he
hiccupped and staggered; and afterward, on the way home, even made love
to the young girl he was protecting. These are the acts of a person not
in his right mind.
5. For a good while his sufferings were so great that he had to submit
to the inconvenience of having his wife give public readings for the
family support; and at times, when he handed these shameful earnings to
the barkeeper, his haughty soul was so torn with anguish that he could
hardly stand without leaning against something. At such times he has
been known to shed tears into his sustenance till it diluted to utter
inefficiency. Inattention of this nature is not the act of a Democrat
unafflicted in mind.
6. He never spared expense in making his wife comfortable during her
occasional confinements. Her father is able to testify to this. There
was always an element of unsoundness about the prisoner's generosities
that is very suggestive at this time and before this court.
7. Two years ago the prisoner came fearlessly up behind Richardson in
the dark, and shot him in the leg. The prisoner's brave and protracted
defiance of an adversity that for years had left him little to depend
upon for support but a wife who sometimes earned scarcely anything for
weeks at a time, is evidence that he would have appeared in front of
Richardson and shot him in the stomach if he had not been insane at the
time of the shooting.
8. Fourteen months ago the prisoner told Archibald Smith that he was
going to kill Richardson. This is insanity.
9. Twelve months ago he told Marshall P. Jones that he was going to kill
Richardson. Insanity.
10. Nine months ago he was lurking about Richardson's home in New
Jersey, and said he was going to kill Richardson. Insanity.
11. Seven months ago he showed a pistol to Seth Brown and said that that
was for Richardson. He said Brown testified that at that time it seemed
plain that something was the matter with McFarland, for he crossed the
street diagonally nine times in fifty yards, apparently without any
settled reason for doing so, and finally fell in the gutter and went to
sleep. He remarked at the time that McFarland acted strange--believed he
was insane. Upon hearing Brown's evidence, John W. Galen, M.D., affirmed
at once that McFarland was insane.
12. Five months ago, McFarland showed his customary pistol, in his
customary way, to his bed-fellow, Charles A. Dana, and told him he was
going to kill Richardson the first time an opportunity offered. Evidence
of insanity.
13. Five months and two weeks ago McFarland asked John Morgan the time
of day, and turned and walked rapidly away without waiting for an answer.
Almost indubitable evidence of insanity. And--
14. It is remarkable that exactly one week after this circumstance, the
prisoner, Daniel McFarland, confronted Albert D. Richardson suddenly and
without warning, and shot him dead. This is manifest insanity.
Everything we know of the prisoner goes to show that if he had been sane
at the time, he would have shot his victim from behind.
15. There is an absolutely overwhelming mass of testimony to show that
an hour before the shooting, McFarland was ANXIOUS AND UNEASY, and that
five minutes after it he was EXCITED. Thus the accumulating conjectures
and evidences of insanity culminate in this sublime and unimpeachable
proof of it. Therefore--
Your Honor and Gentlemen--We the jury pronounce the said Daniel McFarland
INNOCENT OF MURDER, BUT CALAMITOUSLY INSANE.
The scene that ensued almost defies description. Hats, handkerchiefs and
bonnets were frantically waved above the massed heads in the courtroom,
and three tremendous cheers and a tiger told where the sympathies of the
court and people were. Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to kiss
the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a
congratulatory shake--but presto! with a maniac's own quickness and a
maniac's own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his
friends with teeth and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing
rapidity with which he broke heads and limbs, and rent and sundered
bodies, till nearly a hundred citizens were reduced to mere quivering
heaps of fleshy odds and ends and crimson rags, was like nothing in this
world but the exultant frenzy of a plunging, tearing, roaring devil of a
steam machine when it snatches a human being and spins him and whirls him
till he shreds away to nothingness like a "Four o'clock" before the
breath of a child.
The destruction was awful. It is said that within the space of eight
minutes McFarland killed and crippled some six score persons and tore
down a large portion of the City Hall building, carrying away and casting
into Broadway six or seven marble columns fifty-four feet long and
weighing nearly two tons each. But he was finally captured and sent in
chains to the lunatic asylum for life.
(By late telegrams it appears that this is a mistake.--Editor Express.)
But the really curious part of this whole matter is yet to be told. And
that is, that McFarland's most intimate friends believe that the very
next time that it ever occurred to him that the insanity plea was not a
mere politic pretense, was when the verdict came in. They think that the
startling thought burst upon him then, that if twelve good and true men,
able to comprehend all the baseness of perjury, proclaimed under oath
that he was a lunatic, there was no gainsaying such evidence and that he
UNQUESTIONABLY WAS INSANE!
Possibly that was really the way of it. It is dreadful to think that
maybe the most awful calamity that can befall a man, namely, loss of
reason, was precipitated upon this poor prisoner's head by a jury that
could have hanged him instead, and so done him a mercy and his country a
service.
POSTSCRIPT-LATER
May 11--I do not expect anybody to believe so astounding a thing, and yet
it is the solemn truth that instead of instantly sending the dangerous
lunatic to the insane asylum (which I naturally supposed they would do,
and so I prematurely said they had) the court has actually SET HIM AT
LIBERTY. Comment is unnecessary. M. T.
THE EUROPEAN WARS --[From the Buffalo Express, July 25, 1870.]
First Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR!!!
NO BATTLE YET!!!
HOSTILITIES IMMINENT!!!
TREMENDOUS EXCITEMENT.
AUSTRIA ARMING!
BERLIN, Tuesday.
No battle has been fought yet. But hostilities may burst forth any week.
There is tremendous excitement here over news from the front that two
companies of French soldiers are assembling there.
&n
bsp; It is rumoured that Austria is arming--what with, is not known.
.......................
Second Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR
NO BATTLE YET!
FIGHTING IMMINENT.
AWFUL EXCITEMENT.
RUSSIA SIDES WITH PRUSSIA!
ENGLAND NEUTRAL!!
AUSTRIA NOT ARMING.
BERLIN, Wednesday.
No battle has been fought yet. However, all thoughtful men feel that the
land may be drenched with blood before the Summer is over.
There is an awful excitement here over the rumour that two companies of
Prussian troops have concentrated on the border. German confidence
remains unshaken!!
There is news to the effect that Russia espouses the cause of Prussia and
will bring 4,000,000 men to the field.
England proclaims strict neutrality.
The report that Austria is arming needs confirmation.
.........................
Third Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR
NO BATTLE YET!
BLOODSHED IMMINENT!!
ENORMOUS EXCITEMENT!!
INVASION OF PRUSSIA!!
INVASION OF FRANCE!!
RUSSIA SIDES WITH FRANCE.
ENGLAND STILL NEUTRAL!
FIRING HEARD!
THE EMPEROR TO TAKE COMMAND.
PARIS, Thursday.
No battle has been fought yet. But Field Marshal McMahon telegraphs thus
to the Emperor:
"If the Frinch army survoives until Christmas there'll be throuble.
Forninst this fact it would be sagacious if the divil wint the rounds of
his establishment to prepare for the occasion, and tuk the precaution to
warrum up the Prussian depairtment a bit agin the day.
MIKE."
There is an enormous state of excitement here over news from the front to