Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  I said there was property in ideas before Queen Anne’s time; it was recognized that books had perpetual copyright up to her day. Dr. Hale has explained, a moment ago, why they reduced it to fourteen years in Queen Anne’s time. That is a very charitable explanation of that event. I never heard it before. I thought a lot of publishers had got together and got it reduced. But I accept Dr. Hale’s more charitable view, for he is older than I am, but not much older, and knows more than I do, but not much more.

  That there could be no such thing as property in an intangible idea, was his position. He said, “What is a book? A book is just built from base to roof of ideas, and there can be no property in them.”

  I said I wished he could mention any kind of property existing on this planet, that had a pecuniary value, which value was not derived from an idea or ideas—solely.

  “Well,” he said, “landed estate—real estate.”

  “Why,” I said, “take an assumed case, of a dozen Englishmen traveling through South Africa—they camp out; eleven of them see nothing at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party who knows what that near-by harbor means, what this lay of the land means; to him it means that some day—you cannot tell when—a railway will come through here, and there on that harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has another idea, and so, perhaps, he trades his last bottle of Scotch whisky and a horse blanket to the principal chief of that region for a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania. There is the value of an idea applied to real estate. That day will come, as it was to come when the Cape-to-Cairo Railway should pierce Africa and cities should be built; there was some smart person who bought the land from the chief and received his everlasting gratitude, just as was the case with William Penn, who bought for forty dollars’ worth of stuff the giant area of Pennsylvania. He did a righteous thing. We have to be enthusiastic over it, because that was a thing that had never happened before probably. There again was the application of an idea to real estate. Every improvement that is put upon real estate is the result of an idea in somebody’s head. A sky-scraper is another idea. The railway was another idea. The telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. The wash-tub was the result of an idea. The thing hadn’t existed before. There is no penny’s-worth of property on this earth that does not derive its pecuniary value from ideas and association of ideas applied and applied and applied again and again and again, as in the case of the steam engine. You have several hundred people contributing their ideas to the improvement and the final perfection of that great thing, whatever it is—telephone, telegraph, and all.”

  A book does consist solely of ideas, from the base to the summit, like any other property, and should not be put under the ban of any restriction, but should be the property of the author and his heirs forever and ever, just as a butcher shop is, or—anything, I don’t care what it is. It all has the same basis. The law should recognize the right of perpetuity in this and every other kind of property. Yet for this property I do not ask that at all. Fifty years from now I shall not be here. I am sorry, but I shall not be here. Still, I should like to see the limit extended.

  Of course we have to move by slow stages. When an event happens in this world, like that of 1714, under Queen Anne, it is a disaster, yet all the world imagines there was an element of justice in it. They do not know why they imagine it, but it is because somebody else has said so. The slow process of recovery has continued until our day, and will keep constantly progressing. First, fourteen years was added, and then a renewal for fourteen years; then you encountered Lord Macaulay, who made a speech on copyright when it was about to achieve a life of sixty years, which kept it at forty-two—a speech that was read and praised all over the world by everybody who did not know that Lord Macaulay did not know what he was talking about. So he inflicted this disaster upon his successors in the authorship of books. The recovery of our lost ground has to undergo regular and slow development—evolution.

  Here is this bill, one instance of it. Make the limit the author’s life and fifty years after, and, fifty years from now, Congress will see that that has not convulsed the world; has not destroyed any San Francisco. No earthquakes concealed in it anywhere. It has harmed nobody. It has merely fed some starving author’s children. Mrs. Stowe’s two daughters were close neighbors of mine, and—well, they had their living very much limited.

  That is about all I was to say, I believe. I have some notes—I don’t know in which pocket I put them—and probably I can’t read them when I find them.

  There was another thing that came up in that committee meeting. Lord Thwing asked me on what ground I could bring forth such a monstrosity as that—the idea of a perpetual copyright on literature.

  He said, “England does not do that.” That was good argument. If England doesn’t do a thing, that is all right. Why should anybody else? England doesn’t do it. England stands for limited copyright, and will stand for limited copyright, and not give unlimited copyright to anybody’s books.

  I said, “You are excepting one book.”

  He said, “No; there is no book in England that has perpetual copyright.”

  I said, “Yes; there is one book in England that has perpetual copyright, and that is the Bible.”

  He said, “There is no such copyright on the Bible in England.”

  But I had the documents with me, and I was able to convince him that not only does England confer perpetual copyright upon the Old and New Testaments, but also on the Revised Scriptures, and also on four or five other theological books, and confers those perpetual copyrights and the profits that may accrue not upon some poor author and his children, but upon the well-to-do Oxford University Press, which can take care of itself without perpetual copyright. There was that one instance of injustice, the discrimination between the author of the present day and the author of thousands of years ago, whose copyright had really expired by the statute of limitations.

  I say again, as I said in the beginning, I have no enmities, no animosities toward this bill. This bill is plenty righteous enough for me. I like to see all these industries and arts propagated and encouraged by this bill. This bill will do that, and I do hope that it will pass and have no deleterious effect. I do seem to have an extraordinary interest in a whole lot of arts and things. The bill is full of those that I have nothing to do with. But that is in line with my generous, liberal nature. I can’t help it. I feel toward those same people the same wide charity felt by the man who arrived at home at two o’clock in the morning from the club. He was feeling perfect satisfaction with life—was happy, was comfortable. There was his house weaving and weaving and weaving around. So he watched his chance, and by and by when the steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up on the portico. The house went on weaving. He watched his door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He got to the stairs, went up on all fours. The house was so unsteady he could hardly reach the top step; his toe hitched on that step, and of course he crumpled all down and rolled all the way down the stairs and fetched up at the bottom with his arm around the newel-post; and he said, “God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this!”

  * Feb. 10, 1907. The English gentleman was not really a gentleman: he sold my private letter to a newspaper.

  Thursday, December 27, 1906

  Mind Cure comments—The sketch entitled “Luck,” and the meeting with Lord Wolseley, the hero of the sketch.

  From Susy’s Biography.

  April 19.

  Yes the Mind Cure does seem to be working wonderfully, papa who has been using glasses now, for more than a year, has laid them off entirely. And my nearsightedness is realy getting better. It seems marvelous! When Jean has stomack ache Clara and I have tried to divert her, by telling her to lie on her side and try Mind Cure. The novelty of it, has made her willing to try it, and then Clara and I would exclaim about how wonderful it was it was getting better! And she would think it realy was
finally, and stop crying, to our delight.

  The other day mamma went into the library and found her lying on the sofa with her back toward the door. She said “Why Jean what’s the matter? dont you feel well? Jean said that she had a little stomack ache, and so thought she would lie down. Mamma said “Why dont you try mind cure?” “I am” Jean answered.

  It is true that the Mind Cure worked wonders. For a million years the mind has been, in a large degree, master of the body, and has been able to heal many of the body’s ailments. When the physician undertakes to cure you he requires you to continue the medicines until the cure has been effected; he would not promise a cure hampered by the understanding that you were to take the medicines when you pleased, and discontinue them at your convenience. In like manner, I suppose that the mind cannot do its healing effectively except it be kept steadily at its work, and its professional requirements be faithfully observed. Take a case of insomnia, for instance. The mind can cure that, and with certainty, under certain conditions—let us say under a single condition: that the patient shall keep watch and not allow his thoughts to interest themselves for a single instant in any distressing or harassing subject. This is all that is necessary to defeat insomnia, and the method is easy and simple—I mean as a rule. There are sorrows and troubles which the beginner’s mind is not able to contend with successfully when those powerful aids—training and experience—are lacking; but to the trained mind, the long-experienced mind, the case is different; it seldom encounters a trouble which it cannot drive out of its client’s thoughts and furnish him healing sleep and peace in its place. I am not speaking from hearsay, but from personal experience; and not from a brief experience, but from the continuous practice and experience of many years.

  To divert the mind from a physical pain, or from a mental one, by the introduction of a new interest, must bring relief, because the mind cannot give full and effective attention to two subjects at the same time. The mind cannot get full satisfaction out of the most entertaining pain if you break in upon its vicious pleasures with a sudden and startling interruption. When you burn yourself, the mind centres all its attention upon the pain, to the exclusion of all other interests, and by this cunning method intensifies it and exaggerates it; but if the stove-pipe comes clattering down with a crash, the mind is diverted to that cataclysm for the moment, and the pain ceases. If the event were not a falling stove-pipe, but a rocking, and cracking, and crumbling sky-scraper in a San Francisco earthquake, and the sufferer were on the twentieth floor and it took him half an hour to pick his way down to the ground, through a rain of dropping plaster and brickbats, he would never feel a twinge of pain from his burn during the whole transit.

  The mind cannot heal broken bones; and doubtless there are many other physical ills which it cannot heal, but it can greatly help to modify the severities of all of them, without exception, and there are mental and nervous ailments which it can wholly heal, without the help of physician or surgeon. Apparently there are many breeds of mental healing, to judge by the names applied to it—such as the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, Mental Healing, Christian Science, and so on—but I suspect, and indeed I also believe, that these are all one and the same thing, and do not need any but one name—Mind Cure. I think it is not a modern discovery. I think it has done its beneficent work in all the ages for a million years, among both the savage and the civilized. I think that all men, for a million years, have used it every day, unconsciously; that we all still use it daily, unconsciously; and that the physician is always making use of it when he says the hopeful and cheering word to his patient.

  My family soon got interested in other matters, and we presently ceased to keep our minds at their beneficent work upon our ailments, and therefore never found out just how much or how little our minds could be depended upon to benefit us. We certainly did persuade ourselves that our eyes were helped, and for a time I got along quite well enough without my glasses, but by and by I resumed them, and have not since discarded them. If Susy and her mother got rid, or partially rid, of their nearsightedness, it was only for a time; they became interested in other matters and the defect returned, and remained with them to the last. I feel quite certain that Christian Science heals many physical and mental ills; but I also feel just as certain that it could call itself by any other name and do the same work without any diminution of its effectiveness.

  From Susy’s Biography.

  The other night papa read us a little article, which he had just written entitled “Luck,” it was very good we thought.

  That sketch is in some book of mine, and I wish I had it by me, so that I could refresh my memory as to its details; but the book is up stairs, therefore we will let it go. The details are very curious and interesting. I wish it understood that I am now speaking from my grave, and that it is my desire, and also my command, that my heirs and assigns shall keep out of print what I am now about to say until I shall have been fertilizing the earth for twenty-five or thirty years. The genesis of the sketch is as follows:

  About twenty-one years ago, Rev. Mr. Twichell came over to our house one evening, full of a tale which he wanted to tell. It was the tale that is set forth in that sketch, and I jotted it down at once, so that I might be sure to get the details right. An English clergyman, on his travels, had been putting in the day with Twichell; both of them had been chaplains in fighting regiments, and they had been having a pleasant time exchanging war reminiscences. In the course of the talk the Englishman told the tale that is narrated in the sketch. He would not name the hero of the sketch, and he defeated all of Joe’s theologically sly and ingenious efforts to get at that forbidden name. The Englishman was himself the chaplain of the sketch, and he said that, incredible, unbelievable, unthinkable, as the details of it were, they were nevertheless true.

  I wrote the sketch and read it to the family. It naturally had a vivid interest for them, because they were privately aware that it was history; whereas to the outside reader it would pass for merely a more or less ingenious collocation of not very plausible inventions. It made enough of an impression upon Susy to move her to mention it in the Biography.

  I doubted the story—I couldn’t help it; but Twichell did not doubt it. He said that the English chaplain was manifestly a sincere and truthful man, and that he was also as manifestly troubled about his confederate share in the lucky hero’s astonishing adventures. I put the manuscript in my pigeon-holes, and there it lay for six years, along with half a dozen other sketches and short stories; then, when we were about to start in the summer of 1891 for a long sojourn in Europe, I took those old sketches out and sold them to the magazines. The “Luck” sketch appeared in Harper’s about the end of that year. A year and a half or two years afterward, I was going along the street one day in Rome, when an English gentleman stopped me, named me, asked if he was right in his guess, and when I said he was, we dropped into conversation and took a long walk together. By and by, when we had become pretty well acquainted, and the ice was all melted, he said,

  “Mr. Clemens, shall you go to England?”

  I said “It is likely, but I don’t know. My wife arranges the itinerary and saves me all that kind of trouble. I think it quite likely that we shall go.”

  He said “Shall you take your tomahawk with you?”

  “Why yes, if it shall seem best.”

  “Well it will. Be advised. Take it with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of that sketch of yours entitled ‘Luck.’ That sketch is current in England, and you will surely need your tomahawk.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I think so because the hero of the sketch will naturally want your scalp, and will probably apply for it. Be advised. Take your tomahawk along.”

  “Why, even with it I shan’t stand any chance, because I shan’t know him when he applies, and he will have my scalp before I know what his errand is.”

  “Come, do you mean to say that you don’t know who the hero of that s
ketch is?”

  There was surprise and incredulity in his tone. I said,

  “Indeed I haven’t any idea who the hero of the sketch is.”

  “Very well; he knows who the hero of it is, and so does everybody in England, from the throne down. The tale is true. You have set down the facts veraciously; they were all known before you printed them; they were talked about privately long ago, but you are the first to make a public matter of them; also, you have added a detail to that history—you have added the chaplain. Nobody was able to guess, before, how that hero ever happened to get his start on his extraordinary career. The start had to be a miracle, apparently, but nobody could guess what the miracle was. The chaplain was the only man in the world, except the hero, who knew that deep and all-resolving secret. You have let it out, and now the career that followed is explained, justified, made plausible—let us say made possible. It was possible before, because it had happened, but it was not realizably possible until you revealed the crucial secret. Now then, you are speaking seriously when you tell me you don’t know who the hero of that sketch is?”

  “Yes, I am speaking seriously. I haven’t any idea who it is. Who is it?”

  “The high chief and topmost summit of the armies of England—Field-Marshall Lord Wolseley!”

  It nearly took my breath away. Several times, during the next two or three years, I had similar conversations with Englishmen on the Continent. They always said “It is Wolseley. Everybody knew those curious facts before you printed them.”