The Portable Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  The text for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with one notable exception, derives from the first American edition of the novel (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885). Following the example of Bernard DeVoto’s Portable Mark Twain, the “raftsmen episode,” first published in Chapter 3 of Life on the Mississippi, but originally intended as part of the novel, has been restored as part of Chapter 16 of Huckleberry Finn.

  “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” was first published in the Century Magazine, December, 1885 and is the source for this text. The texts for “The Yankee in Search of Adventure” and “The Holy Fountain” are from the first American edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1889).

  Mark Twain wrote “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” in 1892 and asked his business manager, Fred Hall, to place it in either Cosmopolitan or Century magazine. Hall was unsuccessful in placing the manuscript, but Iriving S. Underhill, wishing to promote Niagara Falls as a tourist attraction, asked Twain for a contribution for The Niagara Book. Twain revised “Adam’s Diary,” making Niagara Falls Park the scene for the work, instead of the Garden of Eden. The text printed here is from The Niagara Book. A Complete Souvenir of Niagara Falls Containing Sketches . . . by W. D. Howells, Mark Twain . . . and Others (Buffalo: Underhill & Nichols, 1893).

  “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” was published in the North American Review, February, 1901, and is the source for this text. “Corn-Pone Opinions” was written in 1901 but was first published in Europe and Elsewhere, Albert Bigelow Paine, ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1923), the source of the present text. A chapter from Twain’s ongoing “Autobiography,” “Early Days” was published in the North American Review, March, 1907, and is the source for this text.

  The texts for “Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims,” “Education and Citizenship,” and “The Alphabet and Simplified Spelling” are from the first American edition of Mark Twain’s Speeches (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1910). “Advice to Youth” and “Farewell Banquet for Bayard Taylor” are from Mark Twain Speaking, Paul Fatout, ed. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1976).

  The letter to Frank Nichols (3/1885) was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser on April 2, 1885. The letter to Susan Crane (3/19/1893) is reprinted with permission from the Hartford House, Hartford, Connecticut. The remaining letters are from the two-volume Mark Twain’s Letters, arranged with comment by Albert Bigelow Paine (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1917).

  Chronology

  1835 Samuel L. Clemens is born in Florida, Missouri.

  1839 The Clemens family moves to Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River.

  1847 His father, John Marshall Clemens, dies March 24.

  1849-1851 Apprentices with Joseph Ament, printer; sets type for the Hannibal Courier.

  1853 Leaves Hannibal for St. Louis; spends August in New York City; visits Philadelphia.

  1857 Meets Horace Bixby, the riverboat pilot, who agrees to take him as an apprentice.

  1858-1859 Apprentices as a “cub” pilot; receives his license April 9, 1859.

  1861 In June, joins the Marion Rangers, a group of volunteers sympathetic to the Confederate cause. The unit disbands after two weeks.

  In July, travels with his brother Orion to the Nevada Territory.

  1862 Joins staff of the Virginia City, Nevada, Territorial Enterprise.

  1863 In three “Letters from Carson,” he first uses the pen name “Mark Twain.”

  1864 Moves to San Francisco and works as a reporter for the Morning Call. Publishes sketches in the Golden Era and the Californian.

  1865 “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” is published in the New York Saturday Press and is widely reprinted throughout the country.

  1867 In June, sails on the Quaker City for Europe and the Holy Land as a correspondent for the Alta California and the New York Tribune.

  Contracts with the American Publishing Company to make letters from voyage into a book.

  Meets Olivia Langdon.

  1869 Becomes engaged to Olivia Langdon.

  The Innocents Abroad is published.

  1870 Marries February 2; moves to Buffalo, New York.

  Son Langdon is born; dies 18 months later.

  1872 Roughing It is published.

  Daughter Olivia Susan (Susy) is born.

  1873 The Gilded Age (coauthored with Charles Dudley Warner) is published.

  1874 Daughter Clara is born.

  The Clemenses move into their still uncompleted house in Hartford, Connecticut, in the fall.

  In November, publishes “A True Story” in the Atlantic Monthly, Twain’s first attempt to tell a serious story in African-American dialect.

  Begins writing articles about his years as a Mississippi riverboat apprentice.

  1875 In January, the first installment of “Old Times on the Mississippi” appears in the Atlantic Monthly.

  In September, Mark Twain’s Sketches New and Old is published.

  1876 In the summer begins writing “Huck Finn’s Autobiography” at Quarry Farm, overlooking Elmira, New York.

  Publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

  1877 In December, delivers the “Whittier Birthday Speech” in Boston. Many, including Clemens’s friend William Dean Howells, are shocked by the burlesque that features tramps impersonating Longfellow, Holmes, and Emerson.

  1878 In April, the Clemens family travels to Germany and makes excursions throughout Switzerland and Italy. They return home September, 1879.

  1880 In March, A Tramp Abroad is published.

  Daughter Jane Lampton (Jean) is born.

  1881 In December, The Prince and the Pauper is published.

  1882 In preparation of expanding the “Old Times on the Mississippi” articles into a book, travels to St. Louis and takes a riverboat down to New Orleans and then back north, stopping off at his hometown, Hannibal.

  1883 In May, Life on the Mississippi is published.

  1884 In May, he and Charles L. Webster start their own publishing company.

  In July, begins writing “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians.”

  In November, begins a four-month lecture tour with George Washington Cable.

  In December, the English edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published.

  1885 His own publishing house, Charles L. Webster & Company, issues the first American edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, on February 18.

  “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” is published in the December issue of Century.

  Begins investing in the Paige typesetting machine.

  1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is published by Charles L. Webster & Company.

  Optimistic about the prospects for the Paige typesetter and that he will be able to retire from writing and live off the profits.

  1890 His mother, Jane Lampton Clemens, dies.

  1891 With the publishing house deeply in debt, he stops his payments for the support of the Paige typesetting project.

  Unable to afford the maintenance of their Hartford house, the family moves to Europe.

  1893 “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” is published in Niagara Book.

  1894 Clemens declares voluntary bankruptcy.

  The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins is published by the American Publishing Company.

  1895 Begins his round-the-world lecture tour in order to pay creditors.

  1896 His daughter Susy dies.

  1898 Remaining debts paid in full.

  1901 “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” is published in the North American Review and as a pamphlet by the Anti-Imperialist League.

  The family moves to Riverdale-on-the-Hudson in New York.

  Writes “Corn-Pone Opinions”; published posthumously. 1902 Visits Hannibal and St. Louis for the last time.

  Receives an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the Univer
sity of Missouri-Columbia.

  1903 Settles in Italy for Olivia’s health.

  1904 Olivia Clemens dies June 5.

  1905 Writes “Eve’s Diary,” published in Harper’s Magazine.

  A seventieth birthday party in his honor is given at Delmonico’s; 172 people attend.

  1906 What Is Man? is published anonymously by DeVinne Press.

  Begins to publish “Chapters from My Autobiography” in the North American Review.

  1907 Receives an honorary Litt.D. degree from Oxford.

  Publishes “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” in Harper’s Magazine (Dec. 1907-Jan. 1908).

  1908 Conceives the idea of forming a club called the “Aquarium,” whose members would be schoolgirls between ten and sixteen years old called “angelfish.”

  Moves into new house in Redding, Connecticut, and at daughter Clara’s suggestion calls it “Stormfield.”

  1909 Daughter Jean dies December 24.

  1910 Travels to Bermuda; begins to have chest pains.

  Returns to Stormfield; dies April 21.

  TALES AND SKETCHES

  Twain’s genius was constitutionally eruptive, and for that reason much of his best work is to be found in his short fiction where the spontaneity of his imagination, combined as it almost always was with meticulous revision, could be given free rein. The writer was naturally adept at most short forms—the tall tale, the sketch, the burlesque and parody, the fable—but he was also disposed to ring some changes on narrative conventions. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a case in point. Clemens had heard a man named Ben Coon tell the story in a mining camp in the California foothills and made brief notes for a tale to be written at some future date. When Artemus Ward requested a humorous tale of him for a collection of such stories, Twain had his opportunity, and he chose the familiar form of the frame tale to structure the narrative. A frame tale typically begins with a genteel narrator (educated, correct, and a bit stodgy) who comes in contact with a vernacular character (unrefined and ungrammatical) who, in his turn, spins a humorous yarn. The genteel character returns at the end to round things off. Because this sort of humor was popular in Eastern periodicals, there was a temptation for the writer to condescend to the frontier ruffian and to make him a figure of fun in order to please an audience generally perceived to be above and apart from such types. Twain, on the other hand, more often than not makes the teller (in this case Simon Wheeler) and the principal character (here, Jim Smiley) amusing and certainly limited in understanding and opportunities, but they are sympathetic too. And within Wheeler’s frame of reference, Smiley and the mysterious stranger who bests him are men of “transcendent genius.” The Twain persona, on the other hand, is blind to the humor of the story and only belatedly recognizes that he has been, from the beginning, the butt of a joke concocted by Artemus Ward. “The Story of the Old Ram” is another frame tale, and once again, Twain, in the role of tenderfoot in the Nevada Territory, realizes that he has been set up by the “boys.” In believing that he has the privilege of hearing the notorious story of the old ram, told by a man who must be “symmetrically” drunk to tell it, Twain perceives, by the end, that he has been “sold.” Jim Blaine, on the other hand, is unaware that anything he has said is funny, and, instead of concluding a tale that really has never gotten started, he falls asleep midsentence.

  “How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once,” “Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral,” “Letters from Greeley,” and “An Encounter with an Interviewer” do not depend on the device of the frame tale as a form, but they do participate in the humor of encounters between and among characters of different backgrounds and experience. Two of them benefit from Twain’s journalistic experience—he wrote “How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once” at a time when he was one-third owner of a Buffalo newspaper and was involved in making editorial decisions of his own; as a journalist and, later as something of a celebrity himself, Twain had been on both sides of the reporter’s notepad and knew something about the latent comedy in any encounter with an interviewer. His days in the West had thoroughly acquainted him with the slang and argot of the mining camps, and with men such as Buck Fanshaw, a “bully boy with a glass-eye” and who never “shook his mother.” “Letters from Greeley,” on the other hand, is founded on two widely known facts—that Greeley was an amateur farmer who published his views on agriculture and that his handwriting was notoriously illegible. All of these tales depend on some form of miscommunication for their humor, but beyond and above that common foundation, Twain’s humorous imagination might soar to unexplored territory. Everyone has had trouble deciphering another’s handwriting, but who else but Twain could read into the scrawl: “Bolivia extemporizes mackeral.” Everyone in a temper has improvised some sort of profanity, but who else but Twain could unleash these ripe expletives upon the regular editor of an agricultural journal: “you cornstalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower . . . You turnip! . . . Yam! . . . Pie-plant!”

  In dramatic contrast to Twain’s tall tales and humorous sketches, “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It” is a morally serious story. Nevertheless, Clemens enlisted the devices of humor and modified them to his purpose. The Aunt Rachel of this tale was, in fact, Mary Cord, the servant of Clemens’s sister-in-law, Susan Crane, at Quarry Farm, which overlooks the town of Elmira, New York. Clemens had more than once boasted that, because he had grown up around slaves in Missouri, he was better acquainted with the temperament of blacks than New Yorkers. Susan Crane was not convinced, and urged Clemens to ask Mary Cord to tell her own story. Clemens was reluctant, but one evening he did ask the woman about herself, and the result was the inspiration for one of his finest short works. By the end of her story, Clemens must have known that he had been set up by Susan Crane and that the effect of Mary Cord’s tale was transforming. Once again, Sam Clemens had been “sold,” but in an entirely serious way. “A True Story” is not merely a transcript of what he heard, however. He shaped the narrative, giving it a coherent beginning, middle, and end; and through the artful management of gesture, what Twain sometimes called “stage directions,” he made Aunt Rachel a dignified and powerful moral presence. Twain submitted the story to the Atlantic magazine and—somewhat to his surprise—the editor, William Dean Howells, was pleased to publish it. It was the first time Twain had had anything accepted by that prestigious magazine. And it was probably the first time, as well, that he recognized that he could tell a genuinely “literary” tale with a serious moral purpose entirely in dialect. This recognition would later prove important when he began to write Huckleberry Finn.

  “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865)

  In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

  I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel’s, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley—Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley—a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel’s Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

  Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner
and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:

  There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of ’49—or may be it was the spring of ’50—I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn’t finished when he first came to the camp; but any way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body to bet on the other side; and if he couldn’t, he’d change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him—any way just so’s he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn’t be no solitry thing mentioned but that feller’d offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you’d find him flush, or you’d find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he’d bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he’d bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he’d bet on it; why, if there were two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg’lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him—he would bet on any thing—the dangdest feller. Parson Walker’s wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn’t going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerably better—thank the Lord for his inf’nit mercy—and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Prov’dence, she’d get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, “Well, I’ll risk two-and-a-half that she don’t, any way.”