It was, of course, funny; but under the fun it was an impassioned study of the human conscience. Hawthorne or Bunyan might have been proud to imagine that powerful allegory, which had a grotesque force far beyond either of them.... Yet it quite failed of the response I had hoped for it, and I shall not insist here upon Mark Twain as a moralist; though I warn the reader that if he leaves out of the account an indignant sense of right and wrong, a scorn of all affectations and pretense, an ardent hate of meanness and injustice, he will come infinitely short of knowing Mark Twain.
Howells realized the unwisdom and weakness of dogmatic insistence, and the strength of understatement. To him Mark Twain was already the moralist, the philosopher, and the statesman; he was willing that the reader should take his time to realize these things. The article, with his subject's portrait as a frontispiece, appeared in the Century for September, 1882. If it carried no new message to many of its readers, it at least set the stamp of official approval upon what they had already established in their hearts.
CXL
DOWN THE RIVER
Osgood was doing no great things with The Prince and the Pauper, but Clemens gave him another book presently, a collection of sketches--The Stolen White Elephant. It was not an especially important volume, though some of the features, such as "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning" and the "Carnival of Crime," are among the best of their sort, while the "Elephant" story is an amazingly good take-off on what might be called the spectacular detective. The interview between Inspector Blunt and the owner of the elephant is typical. The inspector asks:
"Now what does this elephant eat, and how much?"
"Well, as to what he eats--he will eat anything. He will eat a man, he will eat a Bible; he will eat anything between a man and a Bible."
"Good-very good, indeed, but too general. Details are necessary; details are the only valuable thing in our trade. Very well, as to men. At one meal--or, if you prefer, during one day--how many men will he eat if fresh?"
"He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a single meal he would eat five ordinary men."
"Very good; five men. We will put that down. What nationalities would he prefer?"
"He is indifferent about nationalities. He prefers acquaintances, but is not prejudiced against strangers."
"Very good. Now, as to Bibles. How many Bibles would he eat at a meal?"
"He would eat an entire edition."
Clemens and Osgood had a more important publishing enterprise on hand. The long-deferred completion of the Mississippi book was to be accomplished; the long-deferred trip down the river was to be taken. Howells was going abroad, but the charming Osgood was willing to make the excursion, and a young man named Roswell Phelps, of Hartford, was engaged as a stenographer to take the notes.
Clemens made a farewell trip to Boston to see Howells before his departure, and together they went to Concord to call on Emerson; a fortunate thing, for he lived but a few weeks longer. They went again in the evening, not to see him, but to stand reverently outside and look at his house. This was in April. Longfellow had died in March. The fact that Howells was going away indefinitely, made them reminiscent and sad.
Just what breach Clemens committed during this visit is not remembered now, and it does not matter; but his letter to Howells, after his return to Hartford, makes it pretty clear that it was memorable enough at the time. Half-way in it he breaks out:
But oh, hell, there is no hope for a person that is built like me, because there is no cure, no cure.
If I could only know when I have committed a crime: then I could conceal it, and not go stupidly dribbling it out, circumstance by circumstance, into the ears of a person who will give no sign till the confession is complete; and then the sudden damnation drops on a body like the released pile-driver, and he finds himself in the earth down to his chin.