by Mark Twain
Ten pages of that. Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled railroad train. Seven cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so as to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor can ever remember any part of a business-talk except the part that’s got graft in it for him and the magazine. I said, “Read that text, Jackson, and let it go on the record; read it out loud.” He read it: “Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the ornithorhyncus as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects.”
I said, “You want ten pages of those rumbling, great long summer thunder-peals and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal?”
He said, “A word’s a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you going to do about it?”
I said, “Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. What’s an average English word?”
He said, “Six letters.”
I said, “Nothing of the kind; that’s French, and includes the spaces between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half. By hard honest labor I’ve dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. I can put 1,200 words on your page, and there’s not another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. My page is worth $84 to me. It takes exactly as long to fill your magazine page with long words as it does with short ones—four hours. Now then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours. I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor. For the family’s sake I’ve got to be. So I never write ‘metropolis’ for seven cents, because I can get the same money for ‘city.’ I never write ‘policeman,’ because I can get the same price for ‘cop.’ And so on and so on. I never write ‘valetudinarian’ at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn’t do it for fifteen. Examine your shameful text, please; count the words.”
He counted, and said it was twenty-four. I asked him to count the letters. He made it 203.
I said, “Now, I hope you see the whole size of your contemplated crime. With my vocabulary I would make sixty words out of those 203 letters, and get $4.20 for it; whereas for your inhuman twenty-four I would get only $1.68. Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about $300; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same labor would pay me $840. I do not wish to work upon this scandalous job by the piece, I want to be hired by the year.” He coldly refused. I said:
“Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you ought at least to allow me overtime on that word ‘extemporaneousness.’” Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I was not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous ornithorhyncus, and rotten to the heart with holophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. God forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours!
From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member of that heaven-born institution, the International Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with the Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work.
Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally, sanely—yes, and calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn’t it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she never saw a spelling book in her life. The spelling is her own. There isn’t a waste letter in it anywhere: it reduces the fonetics to the last gasp—it squeezes the surplusage out of every word—there’s no spelling that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House. And as for the punctuation, there isn’t any. It is all one sentence, eagerly and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. The letter is absolutely genuine—I have the proofs of that in my possession. I can’t stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter presently and comfort your eyes with it:—
“Miss——dear freind i took some Close into the armerry and give them to you to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to truble you but i got to have one of them Back it was a black oll woole Shevyott With a jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and passy menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about It. I thoght she was willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For her i gess you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True freind. i liked your appearance very Much.”
Now you see what Simplified Spelling can do. It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions like a spellbinder. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print all your dispatches in it.
Now, I wish to say just one entirely serious word:
I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because, in the little while that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with these old-fashioned forms, and I don’t propose to make any trouble about it at all.
There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography, and it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its present condition to satisfy a million people who like to have their literature in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the forms as they are while we have got a hundred thousand people coming in here from foreign countries every month and they have got to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn. There is really no argument against reform except merely sentimental argument.
People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spenser and Shakspeare and a lot of other people who did not know how to spell anyway, and it has been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to continue to preserve it because of its ancient and hallowed associations. If that argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness for them on account of the associations.
Tuesday, November 20, 1906
Georgia Cayvan dead—Some details of her career—The pension scheme for raising money for charity—Instance where it worked: Helen Keller—Mr. Ellsworth’s attempt to raise money, by written applications, for Major Pond’s little boy, which did not work.
Georgia Cayvan is dead. I find this in the morning paper. She was close upon fifty years old. It is another tragedy. Apparently, broadly speaking, life is just that, simply that—a tragedy; with a dash of comedy distributed through it, here and there, to heighten the pain and magnify it, by contrast. I knew Georgia Cayvan thirty years ago. She was so young, then, and so innocent and ignorant, that life was a joy to her. She did not need to say so in words; it beamed from her eyes and expressed itself—almost shouted itself—in her attitudes, her carriage, the tones of her voice, and in all her movements. It
was refreshment to a jaded spirit to look at her. She was a handsome creature; I remember her very well indeed. She was just starting in life; just making tentative beginnings toward earning her bread. She had taken lessons in the Delsarte elocutionary methods, and was seeking pupils, with the idea of teaching that art. She came to our house in Hartford every day, during a month or two, and her class came there to learn. Presently she tried her hand as a public reader. Once, when she was to read to the young ladies in Miss Porter’s celebrated school in Farmington, eight miles back in the country, I went out there and heard her. She was not yet familiar enough with the arbitrary Delsarte gestures to make them seem easy and natural, and so they were rather machine-like, and marred her performance; but her voice and her personality saved the day and won the praises of the house.
The stage was her dream and her ambition. She presently got engagements in New York, and soon began to rise in popular favor. Her advancement was rapid; she quickly acquired a wide reputation and became a welcome figure upon every stage between New York and San Francisco. She commanded high pay; she was a pet of prosperity; her high place seemed permanently established; consequently she was envied, which was natural. Years went by; her health failed; she was obliged to retire from the stage; her name no longer appeared in print, and she was presently forgotten. By and by she was able to appear again, for a little while, but the days of her good fortune were over; she showed age and care; her form had lost its grace, and to her houses she was a stranger; they were cold, and their coldness quenched her fires. She could not play against this frost, which was more than a frost, and deadlier, since the feeling evinced was that of compassion—the most fatal of all the attitudes an audience can assume.
She again retired from the stage, discouraged and with broken health, and again her name passed out of print. Presently it was discovered that her mind was affected, and that she was wholly without means. But she had been generous, in her prosperous days, toward actors smitten with misfortune, and now her generosity bore fruit. The profession flocked to her relief, and quickly raised a fund sufficient to keep her in comfort during the rest of her days. She has remained in a private asylum for the insane ever since, and now good fortune is hers once more after these eleven dragging years of melancholy darkness, for she is dead. It is a pathetic history.
Actors can always raise a fund for their unfortunates, they being able by their genius and accomplishments to furnish an equivalent for every dollar the friend and the stranger may contribute, but what other profession can do it? Raising a fund for a benevolent object is one of the most difficult enterprises that this life furnishes. As much as thirty years ago, I had already acquired experience enough in the solemn joys of raising charity funds to enable me to retire from that business permanently. Mrs. Clemens and I undertook, at various times, to raise several funds of the kind, of several thousand dollars each, but we had no success, and had to contribute the whole of the funds ourselves, to “save our face.” This was expensive. That was one difficulty; another difficulty was that the fund-raising idea is a stupid one by the very nature of it. So we retired from that business and invented a better system—a more rational system—and reduced it to a code, and put it in writing, for future guidance. This was a pension system.
The idea was this: a rich man who could afford a subscription of a thousand dollars quite easily, wouldn’t contribute it; he wouldn’t spare it out of his business; neither was he willing to cut down his children’s estate to that degree. But we argued that perhaps he would contribute the interest on a thousand dollars annually, for a time, and that if he paid the fifty dollars in instalments, quarterly, he wouldn’t miss, nor mind, the small periodical outgo of twelve dollars and a half. We also argued that the man to whom a hundred dollars in a lump was a matter of consequence, would not contribute so considerable a sum to a fund, but could be persuaded to contribute the interest upon such a sum once a year toward a pension account.
The pension scheme succeeded to our entire satisfaction. When we asked a person to contribute the interest on a certain sum we asked him to contribute it annually for as many years as he would, but with the distinct understanding that he could withdraw his name, without prejudice, whenever he chose to do it, and without apology or explanation; but give us timely notice, so that we could supply his place with another benefactor, and thus keep the pension aggregate unimpaired.
As the years went by we now and then recommended the pension system to persons who called to get subscriptions for a fund, and we were gratified to see that whenever they tried our system it succeeded. I call to mind a couple of instances of comparatively recent years.
One was the case of Helen Keller. I will come to it presently. I first met Helen Keller, that wonderful creature, when she was fourteen years old. It was at Laurence Hutton’s house, one rainy Sunday afternoon. She had then been under the loving care and competent instruction of Miss Sullivan for seven years. When Miss Sullivan undertook the case, Helen was seven years old, and had been stone blind, deaf, and dumb, for five years and a half. To educate such a child was certainly a formidable undertaking, and nearly equivalent to trying to educate a graven image; but Miss Sullivan was a pastmaster of Dr. Howe’s methods, and by heroic pluck and perseverance she gradually introduced the blessed light into that darkened mind. In seven years she made a scholar out of that child. To-day Helen Keller is one of the best educated women in the world. She is a college graduate, and is a competent scholar in Greek, Latin, German, French, and mathematics; she is familiar with the literature of those languages, and not many persons can write so ably, so gracefully, and so eloquently as she—witness the letter which she wrote me last March, and which I copied into this autobiography at the time.
Three or four years after the visit to Laurence Hutton’s house—a visit which I have described at considerable length in an earlier chapter of this autobiography—I was sojourning in London with my family. I received a letter from Hutton, stating that disaster had befallen Helen; that the wealthy gentleman who had been her and her teacher’s support for a number of years, and who had intended to make provision for them in his will, had suddenly died intestate, leaving Helen and Miss Sullivan destitute. Hutton was proposing to raise a fund of fifty thousand dollars, the income of which was to go to the support of the two women, and he asked me if I could raise a part of this fund in London. I wrote him that it would take him a good while to raise the fifty thousand dollars, and that meantime the beneficiaries would need money. Then I detailed to him the pension scheme, and suggested that he conduct both schemes at the same time, and told him I thought the pension scheme would succeed at once, and that the fund scheme would drag.
After a week or two he wrote that the fund scheme was dragging, but that he had acquired in a single afternoon a pension list of twenty-five hundred dollars a year, the interest on fifty thousand dollars, and that a fund would not be needed. One man on that list pledged twelve hundred dollars a year, the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars, and in the ten years which have since elapsed his contribution has aggregated twelve thousand dollars. He still pays it. He does not feel, or mind, this gradual outgo; but if he had been asked to contribute five thousand dollars in a lump to a fund, he would have declined.
When J. B. Pond, the lecture agent, died, three or four years ago, he left no estate. Ellsworth, of the Century Company, undertook to raise a fund of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars, the interest on it to be devoted to the school and college expenses of Pond’s little boy. Ellsworth wrote and asked me to subscribe, and said he was going to apply to the hundred, or hundred and fifty, or two hundred, professionals, of one kind and another, for whose exhibitions Pond had acted as agent during twenty years. He was going to apply to these people by letter. I wrote him that he would not be able to raise any such fund—certainly not by letter. I proposed my pension scheme, and pledged myself for fifty dollars a year for five years, and begged him to try the system, but not by letter. It must be done in person, a
nd face to face with the victim. But he preferred his own plan, and proceeded to raise his twelve- or fifteen-thousand-dollar fund by letter. From Sir Henry M. Stanley he received a gift of one hundred dollars, and a like contribution from two or three others of Pond’s most shining stars; but he got no more than a hundred dollars from any client except me, and I would not have contributed my two hundred and fifty dollars in a lump sum.
Stanley’s lecture tour in the United States, after he returned from finding and rescuing Emin Pacha, was Pond’s one really brilliant triumph of his twenty years’ service as a lecture agent. For once, Pond was brave. He offered Stanley a hundred and ten thousand dollars for a hundred and ten nights, all expenses paid, and he came out of the campaign a clear hundred and ten thousand to the good himself.
I knew Stanley well for thirty-seven years—from the day that he stenographically reported a lecture of mine in St. Louis, for a local newspaper, until his death in 1904—and I know that if Ellsworth had sent a persuasive representative to talk with him on a pension basis, he would have pledged a hundred dollars a year indefinitely, and without hesitation.