by Mark Twain, 2010
He requested that much of his autobiography be unpublished until 100 years after his death.
Introduction = 58 pages
Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations, 1870-1905, Pgs. 59-199
Autobiography of Mark Twain, pgs. 203-467
Explanatory Notes, pgs. 469-650
Appendixes, pgs. 651-667
Note on the Text, pgs. 669-679
Word Division in this Volume, pg. 680
References, pgs. 681-712
Index, pgs. 713-736
From the Autobiography of Mark Twain
Page 209, “My brother Henry was six months old at the time. I used to remember his walking into a fire outdoors when he was a week old. It was remarkable in me to remember a thing like that, which occurred when I was so young. And it was still more remarkable that I should cling to the delusion, for thirty years, that I did remember it–for of course it never happened; he would not have been able to walk at that age.”
Page 210: “For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whisky toddy when I was six weeks old, but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old, and my memory is not as active as it used to be.”
Describing “a limpid brook” on his uncle’s farm “…it had swimming pools, too, which were forbidden to us and therefore much frequented by us. For we were little Christian children, and had early been taught the value of forbidden fruit.”
“In the little log cabin lived a bedridden white-headed slave woman whom we visited daily, and looked upon with awe, for we believed she was upwards of a thousand years old and had talked with Moses…and so we believed that she had lost her health in the long desert-trip coming out of Egypt…She had a round bald place on the crown of her head, and we used to creep around and gaze at it in reverent silence, and reflect that it was caused by fright through seeing Pharaoh drowned.”
“We had a faithful and affectionate good friend, ally and adviser in “Uncle Dan’l,” a middle-aged slave whose head was the best one in the negro-quarter, whose sympathies were wide and warm, and whose heart was honest and simple and knew no guile. He has served me well, these many, many years…and have staged him in books under his own name and as “Jim,” and carted him all around–to Hannibal, down the Mississippi on a raft, and even across the Desert of Sahara in a balloon–and he has endured it all with the patience and friendliness and loyalty which were his birthright. It was on the farm that I got my strong liking for his race and my appreciation of certain of its fine qualities. This feeling and this estimate have stood the test of sixty years and more and have suffered no impairment. The black face is as welcome to me now as it was then.”
Page 213: “A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is pleasanter to the touch…often I brought them home to amuse my mother with…”There’s something in my coat-pocket for you,” she would put her hand in.”
Page 217: “I can remember the bare wooden stairway in my uncle’s house, and the turn to the left above the landing, and the rafters and the slanting roof over my bed, and the squares of moonlight on the floor, and the white cold world of snow outside, seen through the curtainless window.”
Page 221: “In this Autobiography I shall keep in mind the fact that I am speaking from the grave…nineteen-twentieths of the book will not see print until after my death.
“…I can speak thence freely…
“It seemed to me that I could be as frank and free and unembarrassed as a love letter if I knew that what I was writing would be exposed to no eye until I was dead, and unaware, and indifferent.”
Page 241, re: “Villa di Quarto” describing the countess-an American-from whom he rented the villa in Italy – near Florence: “She is excitable, malicious, malignant, vengeful, unforgiving, selfish, stingy, avaricious, coarse, vulgar, profane, obscene, a furious blusterer on the outside and at heart a coward. Her lips are as familiar with lies, deceptions, swindles and treacheries as are her nostrils with breath.”
Page 229, re: Robert Louis Stevenson: “…his splendid eyes. They burned with a smouldering rich fire under the pent-house of his brows, and they made him beautiful.”
Page 229, Thomas Bailey Aldrich: “…that Aldrich was always witty, always brilliant, if there was anybody present capable of striking his flint at the right angle; that Aldrich was as sure and prompt and unfailing as the red hot iron on the blacksmith’s anvil–you had only to hit it competently to deliver an explosion of sparks. I added –
“‘Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equaled him…Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn’t help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around in him; when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes, he was always brilliant, he will always be brilliant; he will be brilliant in hell–you will see.’
“Stevenson, smiling a chuckly smile, “I hope not.”
“Well, you will, and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a transfigured Adonis backed against a pink sunset.””
Pages 273-277, Mark Twain’s little brother, Henry, works with him on a steamboat. Henry is on the boat, the Pennsylvania, when it explodes. Henry is badly scalded and a kindly doctor doesn’t believe he will die so treats him. He is almost better and ready to go but that night, young doctors gave him an overdose of morphine and killed him. The coffin, the suit Henry wears in it, the place the coffin is put, and the flowers on Henry’s body–All match a dream Mark Twain had 2 weeks before Henry dies.
Page 281: After posting a newspaper article about the “Morris Incident” in the book, he writes: “When an eye witness sets down in narrative form some extraordinary occurrence which he has witnessed, that is news–that is the news form, and its interest is absolutely indestructible; time can have no deteriorating effect upon that episode. I am placing that account here largely as an experiment. If any stray copy of this book shall, by any chance, escape the paper-mill for a century or so, and then be discovered and read, I am betting that that remote reader will find that it is still news, and that it is just as interesting as any news he will find in the newspapers of his day and morning–if newspapers shall still be in existence then–though let us hope they won’t.”
Page 312, the Character of Man: “…of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable of the entire brood. He is the only one–the solitary one–that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices–the most hateful.”…
“…There are certain sweet-smelling sugar-coated lies current in the world which all politic men have apparently tacitly conspired together to support and perpetuate. One of those is, that there is such a thing as independence: independence of thought, independence of opinion, independence of action. Another is, that the world loves to see independence-…” “We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.”
Pages 315-316, speaking to a “rabid Republican,” the father of William R. Hearst: “This was a man who was afterward a United States Senator, and upon whose character rests no blemish that I know of, except that he was the father of the William R. Hearst of today, and therefore grandfather of Yellow Journalism–that calamity of calamities.”
He said, “…To lodge all power in one party and keep it there, is to insure bad government, and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals. The parties ought to be so nearly equal in strength as to make it necessary for the leaders on both sides to choose the very best men they can find.”
“…And I have never voted a straight ticket from that day to this.”
Page 355: “…I used to vex myself with reforms, every now and then. And I never had occasion to regret these divergences, for whether the resulting deprivations were long or short, the rewarding pleasure which I got out of the vice when I returned to it, always paid me for all that it cost.”
I LOVE MARK TWAIN!!
I own this book now, brand new in its wrapper, bought for $10 at Bizarre Bazaar.