by Mark Twain
If we should go on until we had singled out and mentioned the separate and distinct temperaments which have been distributed among the myriads of the animal world, we should find that the reputation of each species is determined by one special and prominent trait; and then we should find that all of these traits, and all the shadings of these many traits, have also been distributed among mankind; that in every man a dozen or more of these traits exist, and that in many men traces and shadings of the whole of them exist. In what we call the lower animals, temperaments are often built out of merely one, or two, or three, of these traits; but man is a complex animal, and it takes all of the traits to fit him out. In the rabbit we always find meekness and timidity, and in him we never find courage, insolence, aggressiveness; and so when the rabbit is mentioned we always remember that he is meek and timid; if he has any other traits or distinctions—except, perhaps, an extravagant and inordinate fecundity—they never occur to us. When we consider the house-fly and the flea, we remember that in splendid courage the belted knight and the tiger cannot approach them, and that in impudence and insolence they lead the whole animal world, including even man; if those creatures have other traits they are so overshadowed by those which I have mentioned that we never think of them at all. When the peacock is mentioned, vanity occurs to us, and no other trait; when we think of the goat, unchastity occurs to us, and no other trait; when certain kinds of dogs are mentioned, loyalty occurs to us, and no other trait; when the cat is mentioned, her independence—a trait which she alone of all created creatures, including man, possesses—occurs to us, and no other trait; except we be of the stupid and the ignorant—then we think of treachery, a trait which is common to many breeds of dogs, but is not common to the cat. We can find one or two conspicuous traits in each family of what we impudently call the lower animals; in each case these one or two conspicuous traits distinguish that family of animals from the other families; also in each case those one or two traits are found in every one of the members of each family, and are so prominent as to eternally and unchangeably establish the character of that branch of the animal world. In all these cases we concede that the several temperaments constitute a law of God, a command of God, and that whatsoever is done in obedience to that law is blameless.
Man was descended from those animals; from them he inherited every trait that is in him; from them he inherited the whole of their numerous traits in a body, and with each trait its share of the law of God. He widely differs from them in this: that he possesses not a single trait that is similarly and equally prominent in each and every member of his race. You can say the house-fly is limitlessly brave, and in saying it you describe the whole house-fly tribe; you can say the rabbit is limitlessly timid, and by that phrase you describe the whole rabbit tribe; you can say the spider is limitlessly murderous, and by that phrase you describe the whole spider tribe; you can say the lamb is limitlessly innocent, and sweet, and gentle, and by that phrase you describe all the lambs; you can say the goat is limitlessly unchaste, and by that phrase you describe the whole tribe of goats. There is hardly a creature which you cannot definitely and satisfactorily describe by one single trait—but you cannot describe man by one single trait. Men are not all cowards, like the rabbit; nor all brave, like the house-fly; nor all sweet and innocent and gentle, like the lamb; nor all murderous, like the spider and the wasp; nor all thieves, like the fox and the blue jay; nor all vain, like the peacock; nor all beautiful, like the angel-fish; nor all frisky, like the monkey; nor all unchaste, like the goat. The human family cannot be described by any one phrase; each individual has to be described by himself. One is brave, another is a coward; one is gentle and kindly, another is ferocious; one is proud and vain, another is modest and humble. The multifarious traits that are scattered, one or two at a time, throughout the great animal world, are all concentrated, in varying and nicely shaded degrees of force and feebleness, in the form of instincts, in each and every member of the human family. In some men the vicious traits are so slight as to be imperceptible, while the nobler traits stand out conspicuously. We describe that man by those fine traits, and we give him praise and accord him high merit for their possession. It seems comical. He did not invent his traits; he did not stock himself with them; he inherited them at his birth; God conferred them upon him; they are the law that God imposed upon him, and he could not escape obedience if he should try. Sometimes a man is a born murderer, or a born scoundrel—like Stanford White—and upon him the world lavishes censure and dispraise; but he is only obeying the law of his nature, the law of his temperament; he is not at all likely to try to disobey it, and if he should try he would fail. It is a curious and humorous fact that we excuse all the unpleasant things that the creatures that crawl, and fly, and swim, and go on four legs do, for the recognizably sufficient reason that they are but obeying the law of their nature, which is the law of God, and are therefore innocent; then we turn about and with the fact plain before us that we get all our unpleasant traits by inheritance from those creatures, we blandly assert that we did not inherit the immunities along with them, but that it is our duty to ignore, abolish, and break these laws of God. It seems to me that this argument has not a leg to stand upon, and that it is not merely and mildly humorous, but violently grotesque.
By ancient training and inherited habit, I have been heaping blame after blame, censure after censure, upon Bret Harte, and have felt the things I have said, but when my temper is cool I have no censures for him. The law of his nature was stronger than man’s statutes and he had to obey it. It is my conviction that the human race is no proper target for harsh words and bitter criticisms, and that the only justifiable feeling toward it is compassion; it did not invent itself, and it had nothing to do with the planning of its weak and foolish character.
Monday, February 11, 1907
The Emperor’s dinner in Berlin at which Mr. Clemens is chief guest, and feels that he may have offended the Emperor by a possible slight breach of royal etiquette—although the Empress Dowager and the reigning Empress afterwards invite him to breakfast, etc. Eleven or twelve years later, at a dinner given by the proprietor of the Staats-Zeitung for Prince Henry when he visited this country, Mr. Clemens was not seated at the state table.
Two months ago (December 6) I was dictating a brief account of a private dinner in Berlin, where the Emperor of Germany was host and I the chief guest. Something happened day before yesterday which moves me to take up that matter again. The additions which I shall now make can appear in print after I am dead, but not before. From 1891 until day before yesterday, I had never mentioned them in print, nor set them down with a pen, nor ever referred to them in any way with my mouth—not even to my wife, to whom I was accustomed to tell everything that happened to me.
At the dinner his Majesty chatted briskly and entertainingly along in easy and flowing English, and now and then he interrupted himself to address a remark to me, or to some other individual of the guests. When the reply had been delivered, he resumed his talk. I noticed that the table etiquette tallied with that which was the law of my house at home when we had guests: that is to say, the guests answered when the host favored them with a remark, and then quieted down and behaved themselves until they got another chance. If I had been in the Emperor’s chair and he in mine, I should have felt infinitely comfortable and at home, and should have done a world of talking, and done it well; but I was guest now, and consequently I felt less at home. From old experience, I was familiar with the rules of the game, and familiar with their exercise from the high place of host; but I was not familiar with the trammeled and less satisfactory position of guest, therefore I felt a little strange and out of place. But there was no animosity—no, the Emperor was host, therefore according to my own rule he had a right to do the talking, and it was my honorable duty to intrude no interruptions or other improvements, except upon invitation; and of course it could be my turn some day: some day, on some friendly visit of inspection to America, it might be my ple
asure and distinction to have him as guest at my table; then I would give him a rest, and a remarkably quiet time.
In one way there was a difference between his table and mine—for instance, atmosphere; the guests stood in awe of him, and naturally they conferred that feeling upon me, for, after all, I am only human, although I regret it. When a guest answered a question he did it with deferential voice and manner; he did not put any emotion into it, and he did not spin it out, but got it out of his system as quickly as he could, and then looked relieved. The Emperor was used to this atmosphere, and it did not chill his blood; maybe it was an inspiration to him, for he was alert, brilliant, and full of animation; also he was most gracefully and felicitously complimentary to my books,—and I will remark here that the happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another. In that other chapter I mentioned the high compliment which he paid to the book, “Old Times on the Mississippi,” but there were others; among them some gratifying praise of my description in “A Tramp Abroad” of certain striking phases of German student life. I mention these things here because I shall have occasion to hark back to them presently.
Fifteen or twenty minutes before the dinner ended the Emperor made a remark to me in praise of our generous soldier-pensions; then without pausing he continued the remark, not speaking to me but across the table to his brother, Prince Heinrich. The Prince replied, endorsing the Emperor’s view of the matter. Then I intruded my own view of it. I said that in the beginning our Government’s generosity to the soldier was clean in its intent, and praiseworthy, since the pensions were conferred upon soldiers who had earned them, soldiers who had been disabled in the war and could no longer earn a livelihood for themselves and their families; but that the pensions decreed and added later lacked the virtue of a clean motive, and had little by little degenerated into a wider and wider and more and more offensive system of vote-purchasing, and was now become a source of corruption which was an unpleasant thing to contemplate, and was a danger, besides. I think that that was about the substance of my remark; but, in any case, the remark had a quite definite result, and that is the memorable thing about it—manifestly it made everybody uncomfortable. I seemed to perceive this quite plainly. I had committed an indiscretion. Possibly it was in violating etiquette by intruding a remark when I had not been invited to make one; possibly it was in taking issue with an opinion promulgated by his Majesty. I do not know which it was, but I quite clearly remember the effect which my act produced, to wit: the Emperor refrained from addressing any remarks to me afterward; and not merely during the brief remainder of the dinner, but afterward in the kneip-room where beer and cigars and hilarious anecdoting prevailed until about midnight. I am sure that the Emperor’s good-night was the only thing he said to me in all that time.
Was this lengthy rebuke studied and intentional? I don’t know, but I regarded it in that way. I can’t be absolutely sure of it, because of modifying doubts created afterwards by one or two circumstances. For example: the Empress Dowager invited me to her palace, and the reigning Empress invited me to breakfast, and also sent General von Versen to invite me to come to her palace and read to her and her ladies from my books. I was not able to do any of these things, because I was ailing, and was soon abed with an inflammation of my port lung which kept me there thirty-four days and came exceedingly near to closing my sojourn in this world; so near that when the physicians ordered me to leave Berlin and go to the Riviera I was reluctant to pay my railway fare in advance, because I did not believe I was going to live to finish the trip. I am aware that it would be most unlikely that the Kaiser’s Empress would invite to breakfast with her a person who had acquired the Kaiser’s disapproval—most unlikely—perhaps even impossible.
All this was in 1891. Eleven or twelve years later Prince Heinrich came over and made a brilliant progress through America. At two of the dinners given in his honor, and where I was one of the guests, no speeches were made, but at another one the case was different. This was a prodigious banquet given by the wealthy proprietor of the Staats-Zeitung to newspaper men of distinction drawn from all large American cities. At that banquet I found myself placed, not at the state table with the other notorieties, as usual, but on the main floor among the human race. My vanity was profoundly hurt. The like of this had not happened to me for thirty-five years. By and by George W. Smalley came over and said to me,
“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you up yonder?”
I said mournfully, “Because I was not invited.”
“You don’t mean it! What ass is engineering this affair?”
“I don’t know which one it is, but I think it’s Ridder.”
“Oh no, Ridder would know better. It must be the blunder of a subordinate. What toast are you going to respond to?”
“None. I have not been invited.”
“Oh come!”
“No—it is as I say. I have not been invited.”
“Do you know, it has an incredible look. There isn’t a man at that state table of any real distinction; they are second-rates and third-rates, every one; they are mere semi-notorieties, evanescents, and of no lasting consequence. Ridder’s understudy seems to have raked the town to find artificial ornaments for his state table. Why have you been left out? How do you account for it?”
“Perhaps it’s because I don’t belong in that class. But it is as it should be, Smalley; I shouldn’t feel at home in that inferior company.”
This was light talk. But at bottom, my vanity was sharply wounded. I was ashamed to be seen down there among all those common people. They would go back home, all over America, and tell about it, and perhaps think they had found out that I was not as important a personage in New York as the country had been deceived into believing. Midway of the banquet I felt that I could not endure the situation any longer, I must go out and cry. So I got up and walked down the central aisle toward a distant door of refuge, and then a thing happened which filled me with joy, and enabled me to show off—and I would rather show off, any time, than save a human life: a multitude of those journalists rose up and flocked after me and crowded that place of refuge whither I went, and shook hands with me, and praised me, and made me ineffably comfortable and contented, for I knew that in that whole house there wasn’t another person that could call out that demonstration except the chief guest, the Imperial Prince, brother of an emperor! I went back to my humble seat healed, comforted, satisfied, all my bitter venom turned to sugar and molasses. On my way up the aisle the Prince discovered me and sent an aide-de-camp to ask me to come up and see him, which I did. He was very cordial, very pleasant, and asked me to come to the withdrawing-room when the banquet should be over, and have a talk. I did it. But he never mentioned the Emperor, and didn’t bring any messages. I judged that Ridder’s blasphemous treatment of me was now explained. I judged that originally he must have placed my name among the speakers—he naturally would; that in accordance with royal etiquette the list would have to be submitted to the Prince; that the Prince had remembered the crime or crimes which I had committed so long before, in Berlin, and had crossed my name out with his blue-pencil.
Tuesday, February 12, 1907
Member of the tariff-revision commission brings message to Mr. Clemens from Emperor Wilhelm in regard to the dinner described in former chapter.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Those stars indicate the long chapter which I dictated yesterday, a chapter which is much too long for magazine purposes, and therefore must wait until this Autobiography shall appear in book form, five years hence, when I am dead: five years according to my calculation, twenty-seven years according to the prediction furnished me a week ago by the latest and most confident of all the palmists who have ever read my future in my hand. The Emperor’s dinner, and its beer-and-anecdote appendix, covered six hours of diligent industry, and this accounts for the extraordinary length of that chapter.
A couple of days ago a gentleman called up
on me with a message. He had just arrived from Berlin, where he has been acting for our Government in a matter concerning tariff-revision, he being a member of the commission appointed by our Government to conduct our share of the affair. Upon the completion of the commission’s labors, the Emperor invited the members of it to an audience, and in the course of the conversation he made a reference to me; continuing, he spoke of my chapter on the German language in “A Tramp Abroad,” and characterized it by an adjective which is too complimentary for me to repeat here without bringing my modesty under suspicion. Then he paid some compliments to “The Innocents Abroad,” and followed these with the remark that my account in one of my books of certain striking phases of German student life was the best and truest that had ever been written. By this I perceive that he remembers that dinner of sixteen years ago, for he said the same thing to me about the student-chapter at that time. Next he said he wished this gentleman to convey two messages to America from him and deliver them—one to the President, the other to me. The wording of the message to me was: