"I was more diffident than I had expected to be, and this was increased by the silence with which I was received when I came forward; so I seemed unable to get the fire into my speech which I had calculated upon, and presently they began to get up and go out; and in a few minutes they all rose up and went away."How could a man uncover such a sore as that and show it to another? Not a word of complaint, you see--only a patient, sad surprise.
3.His next project was to write a burlesque upon Paradise Lost.
4.Then, learning that the Times was paying Harte $100 a column for stories, he concluded to write some for the same price.I read his first one and persuaded him not to write any more.
5.Then he read proof on the N.Y.Eve.Post at $10 a week and meekly observed that the foreman swore at him and ordered him around "like a steamboat mate."6.Being discharged from that post, he wanted to try agriculture--was sure he could make a fortune out of a chicken farm.I gave him $900 and he went to a ten-house village a miles above Keokuk on the river bank--this place was a railway station.He soon asked for money to buy a horse and light wagon,--because the trains did not run at church time on Sunday and his wife found it rather far to walk.
For a long time I answered demands for "loans" and by next mail always received his check for the interest due me to date.In the most guileless way he let it leak out that he did not underestimate the value of his custom to me, since it was not likely that any other customer of mine paid his interest quarterly, and this enabled me to use my capital twice in 6 months instead of only once.But alas, when the debt at last reached $1800 or $2500 (I have forgotten which) the interest ate too formidably into his borrowings, and so he quietly ceased to pay it or speak of it.At the end of two years I found that the chicken farm had long ago been abandoned, and he had moved into Keokuk.Later in one of his casual moments, he observed that there was no money in fattening a chicken on 65 cents worth of corn and then selling it for 50.
7.Finally, if I would lend him $500 a year for two years, (this was 4or 5 years ago,) he knew he could make a success as a lawyer, and would prove it.This is the pension which we have just increased to $600.The first year his legal business brought him $5.It also brought him an unremunerative case where some villains were trying to chouse some negro orphans out of $700.He still has this case.He has waggled it around through various courts and made some booming speeches on it.The negro children have grown up and married off, now, I believe, and their litigated town-lot has been dug up and carted off by somebody--but Orion still infests the courts with his documents and makes the welkin ring with his venerable case.The second year, he didn't make anything.The third he made $6, and I made Bliss put a case in his hands--about half an hour's work.Orion charged $50 for it--Bliss paid him $15.Thus four or five years of laving has brought him $26, but this will doubtless be increased when he gets done lecturing and buys that "law library."Meantime his office rent has been $60 a year, and he has stuck to that lair day by day as patiently as a spider.
8.Then he by and by conceived the idea of lecturing around America as "Mark Twain's Brother"--that to be on the bills.Subject of proposed lecture, "On the, Formation of Character."9.I protested, and he got on his warpaint, couched his lance, and ran a bold tilt against total abstinence and the Red Ribbon fanatics.It raised a fine row among the virtuous Keokukians.
10.I wrote to encourage him in his good work, but I had let a mail intervene; so by the time my letter reached him he was already winning laurels as a Red Ribbon Howler.
11.Afterward he took a rabid part in a prayer-meeting epidemic; dropped that to travesty Jules Verne; dropped that, in the middle of the last chapter, last March, to digest the matter of an infidel book which he proposed to write; and now he comes to the surface to rescue our "noble and beautiful religion" from the sacrilegious talons of Bob Ingersoll.
Now come! Don't fool away this treasure which Providence has laid at your feet, but take it up and use it.One can let his imagination run riot in portraying Orion, for there is nothing so extravagant as to be out of character with him.
Well-good-bye, and a short life and a merry one be yours.Poor old Methusaleh, how did he manage to stand it so long?
Yrs ever, MARK.
To Orion Clemens (Unsent and inclosed with the foregoing, to W.D.Howells):
MUNICH, Feb.9, (1879)
MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours has just arrived.I enclose a draft on Hartford for $25.You will have abandoned the project you wanted it for, by the time it arrives,--but no matter, apply it to your newer and present project, whatever it is.You see I have an ineradicable faith in your unsteadfastness,--but mind you, I didn't invent that faith, you conferred it on me yourself.But fire away, fire away! I don't see why a changeable man shouldn't get as much enjoyment out of his changes, and transformations and transfigurations as a steadfast man gets out of standing still and pegging at the same old monotonous thing all the time.
