Book: Sketches New and Old, Part 5.
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Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Sketches New and Old, Part 5.
SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
by Mark Twain
Part 5.
THE SIAMESE TWINS--[Written about 1868.]
I do not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures
solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning
them, which, belonging only to their private life, have never crept into
print. Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well
qualified for the task I have taken upon myself.
The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate indisposition,
and have clung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and
eventful life. Even as children they were inseparable companions; and it
was noticed that they always seemed to prefer each other's society to
that of any other persons. They nearly always played together; and, so
accustomed was their mother to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of
them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them
--satisfied that when she found that one she would find his brother
somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. And yet these creatures were
ignorant and unlettered-barbarians themselves and the offspring of
barbarians, who knew not the light of philosophy and science. What a
withering rebuke is this to our boasted civilization, with its
quarrelings, its wranglings, and its separations of brothers!
As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still
there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go
away from each other and dwell apart. They have even occupied the same
house, as a general thing, and it is believed that they have never failed
to even sleep together on any night since they were born. How surely do
the habits of a lifetime become second nature to us! The Twins always go
to bed at the same time; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before
his brother. By an understanding between themselves, Chang does all the
indoor work and Eng runs all the errands. This is because Eng likes to
go out; Chang's habits are sedentary. However, Chang always goes along.
Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic; still, to please his
brother, Chang consented to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on
condition that it should not "count." During the war they were strong
partisans, and both fought gallantly all through the great struggle--Eng
on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other
prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly
balanced in favor of each, that a general army court had to be assembled
to determine which one was properly the captor and which the captive.
The jury was unable to agree for a long time; but the vexed question was
finally decided by agreeing to consider them both prisoners, and then
exchanging them. At one time Chang was convicted of disobedience of
orders, and sentenced to ten days in the guard-house, but Eng, in spite
of all arguments, felt obliged to share his imprisonment, notwithstanding
he himself was entirely innocent; and so, to save the blameless brother
from suffering, they had to discharge both from custody--the just reward
of faithfulness.
Upon one occasion the brothers fell out about something, and Chang
knocked Eng down, and then tripped and fell on him, whereupon both
clinched and began to beat and gouge each other without mercy. The
bystanders interfered, and tried to separate them, but they could not do
it, and so allowed them to fight it out. In the end both were disabled,
and were carried to the hospital on one and the same shutter.
Their ancient habit of going always together had its drawbacks when they
reached man's estate, and entered upon the luxury of courting. Both fell
in love with the same girl. Each tried to steal clandestine interviews
with her, but at the critical moment the other would always turn up.
By and by Eng saw, with distraction, that Chang had won the girl's
affections; and, from that day forth, he had to bear with the agony of
being a witness to all their dainty billing and cooing. But with a
magnanimity that did him infinite credit, he succumbed to his fate, and
gave countenance and encouragement to a state of things that bade fair to
sunder his generous heart-strings. He sat from seven every evening until
two in the morning, listening to the fond foolishness of the two lovers,
and to the concussion of hundreds of squandered kisses--for the privilege
of sharing only one of which he would have given his right hand. But he
sat patiently, and waited, and gaped, and yawned, and stretched, and
longed for two o'clock to come. And he took long walks with the lovers
on moonlight evenings--sometimes traversing ten miles, notwithstanding he
was usually suffering from rheumatism. He is an inveterate smoker; but
he could not smoke on these occasions, because the young lady was
painfully sensitive to the smell of tobacco. Eng cordially wanted them
married, and done with it; but although Chang often asked the momentous
question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it
while Eng was by. However, on one occasion, after having walked some
sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from
sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The
lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the
noble brother-in-law. His unwavering faithfulness was the theme of every
tongue. He had stayed by them all through their long and arduous
courtship; and when at last they were married, he lifted his hands above
their heads, and said with impressive unction, "Bless ye, my children, I
will never desert ye!" and he kept his word. Fidelity like this is all
too rare in this cold world.
By and by Eng fell in love with his sister-in-law's sister, and married
her, and since that day they have all lived together, night and day, in
an exceeding sociability which is touching and beautiful to behold, and
is a scathing rebuke to our boasted civilization.
The sympathy existing between these two brothers is so close and so
refined that the feelings, the impulses, the emotions of the one are
instantly experienced by the other. When one is sick, the other is sick;
when one feels pain, the other feels it; when one is angered, the other's
temper takes fire. We have already seen with what happy facility they
both fell in love with the same girl. Now Chang is bitterly opposed to
all forms of intemperance, on principle; but Eng is the reverse--for,
while these men's feelings and emotions are so closely wedded, their
reasoning faculties are unfettered; their thoughts are free. Chang
belongs to the Good Templars, and is a hard--working, enthusiastic
supporter of all temperance reforms. But, to his bitter distress, every
now and then Eng gets drunk, and, of course, that makes Chang drunk too.
This unfortunate thing has been a great sorrow to Chang, for it almost
destroys his usefulness in his favorite field of effort. As sure as he
is to head a great temperance procession Eng ranges up alongside of him,
prompt to the minute, and drunk as a lord; but yet no more dismally and
hopelessly drunk than his brother, who has not tasted a drop. And so the
two begin to hoot and yell, and throw mud and bricks at the Good
Templars; and, of course, they break up the procession. It would be
manifestly wrong to punish Chang for what Eng does, and, therefore, the
Good Templars accept the untoward situation, and suffer in silence and
sorrow. They have officially and deliberately examined into the matter,
and find Chang blameless. They have taken the two brothers and filled
Chang full of warm water and sugar and Eng full of whisky, and in
twenty-five minutes it was not possible to tell which was the drunkest.
Both were as drunk as loons--and on hot whisky punches, by the smell of
their breath. Yet all the while Chang's moral principles were unsullied,
his conscience clear; and so all just men were forced to confess that he
was not morally, but only physically, drunk. By every right and by every
moral evidence the man was strictly sober; and, therefore, it caused his
friends all the more anguish to see him shake hands with the pump and try
to wind his watch with his night-key.
There is a moral in these solemn warnings--or, at least, a warning in
these solemn morals; one or the other. No matter, it is somehow. Let us
heed it; let us profit by it.
I could say more of an instructive nature about these interesting beings,
but let what I have written suffice.
Having forgotten to mention it sooner, I will remark in conclusion that
the ages of the Siamese Twins are respectively fifty-one and fifty-three
years.
SPEECH AT THE SCOTTISH BANQUET IN LONDON--[Written about 1872.]
On the anniversary festival of the Scottish Corporation of London on
Monday evening, in response to the toast of "The Ladies," MARK TWAIN
replied. The following is his speech as reported in the London Observer:
I am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this
especial toast, to 'The Ladies,' or to women if you please, for that is
the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore
the more entitled to reverence [Laughter.] I have noticed that the
Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous
characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to
even the illustrious mother of all mankind herself as a 'lady,' but
speaks of her as a woman, [Laughter.] It is odd, but you will find it is
so. I am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think that the toast
to women is one which, by right and by every rule of gallantry, should
take precedence of all others--of the army, of the navy, of even royalty
itself perhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this day and in
this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general
health to all good women when you drink the health of the Queen of
England and the Princess of Wales. [Loud cheers.] I have in mind a poem
just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. And what
an inspiration that was (and how instantly the present toast recalls the
verses to all our minds) when the most noble, the most gracious, the
purest, and sweetest of all poets says:
"Woman! O woman!--er--
Wom--"
[Laughter.] However, you remember the lines; and you remember how
feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up
before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman;
and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into
worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere
breath, mere words. And you call to mind now, as I speak, how the poet,
with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this
beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows
that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how
the pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe--so wild, so regretful,
so full of mournful retrospection. The lines run thus:
"Alas!--alas!--a--alas!
----Alas!--------alas!"
--and so on. [Laughter.] I do not remember the rest; but, taken
together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that
human genius has ever brought forth--[laughter]--and I feel that if I
were to talk hours I could not do my great theme completer or more
graceful justice than I have now done in simply quoting that poet's
matchless words. [Renewed laughter.] The phases of the womanly nature
are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you shall
find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love.
And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. Who was more
patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a grander
instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you remember
well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over
us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. [Much laughter.] Who does not
sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel? [Laughter.]
Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening
influences, the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia? [Laughter.] Who can
join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when
he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed
in her modification of the Highland costume. [Roars of laughter.]
Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been
poets. As long as language lives the name of Cleopatra will live.
And, not because she conquered George III. [laughter]--but because she
wrote those divine lines:
"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so."
[More laughter.] The story of the world is adorned with the names of
illustrious ones of our own sex--some of them sons of St. Andrew, too
--Scott, Bruce, Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis--[laughter]--the
gifted Ben Lomond, and the great new Scotchman, Ben Disraeli. [Great
laughter.] Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain
ranges of sublime women--the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey
Gamp; the list is endless--[laughter]--but I will not call the mighty
roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion,
luminous with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving
worship of the good and the true of all epochs and all climes. [Cheers.]
Suffice it for our pride and our honor that we in our day have added to
it such names as those of Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale.
[Cheers.] Woman is all that she should be-gentle, patient, long
suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous impulses. It is her
blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage
the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend
the friendless in a word, afford the healing of her sympathies and a home
in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune
that knock at its hospitable door. [Cheers.] And when I say, God bless
her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a
wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother, but in his heart will say,
Amen! [Loud and prolonged cheering.]
--[Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister of England, had
just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and had made a
speech which gave rise to a world of discussion.]
A GHOST STORY
I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper
stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came. The place had
long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence.
I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead,
that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my
life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of
the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and
clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.
I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mold and the
darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before
it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there,
thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning
half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy,
to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar
songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder
and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail,
the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil
patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the
hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the
distance and left no sound behind.
The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose
and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I
had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it
would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the
rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they
lulled me to sleep.
I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found
myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still.
All but my own heart--I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes
began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were
pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets
slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a
great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited,
listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay
torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At
last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and
held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug,
and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain--it grew
stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the
blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of
the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead
than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room--the step of
an elephant, it seemed to me--it was not like anything human. But it was
moving from me--there was relief in that. I heard it approach the door
--pass out without moving bolt or lock--and wander away among the dismal
corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it
passed--and then silence reigned once more.
When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This is a dream--simply
a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself
that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I
was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found that the
locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh
welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it,
and was just sitting down before the fire, when-down went the pipe out of
my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid
breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by
side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison
mine was but an infant's! Then I had had a visitor, and the elephant
tread was explained.
I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long
time, peering into the darkness, and listening.--Then I heard a grating
noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then
the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response
to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled
slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in
and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these
noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the
clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the
clanking grew nearer--while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking
each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle
upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard
muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently;
and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I
became conscious that my chamber was invaded--that I was not alone.
I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings.
Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling
directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped
--two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They, spattered,
liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had--turned to gouts of
blood as they fell--I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I
saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating
bodiless in the air--floating a moment and then disappearing.
The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, anal a solemn
stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have
light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a
sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand!
All strength went from me apparently, and I fell back like a stricken
invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment it seemed to pass to the
door and go out.
When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble,
and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a
hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat
down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the
ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up
and the broad gas-flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I
heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and
nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned.
The tread reached my very door and paused--the light had dwindled to a
sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The
door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and
presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched
it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its
cloudy folds took shape--an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and
last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy
housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed
above me!
All my misery vanished--for a child might know that no harm could come
with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once,
and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a
lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the
friendly giant. I said:
"Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for
the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish
I had a chair--Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing--"
But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him and down he
went--I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.
"Stop, stop, you'll ruin ev--"
Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved
into its original elements.
"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at' all? Do you want to ruin
all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--"
But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed,
and it was a melancholy ruin.
"Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about
the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry
me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which
would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a
respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex,
you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on.
And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have
broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with
chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to
be ashamed of yourself--you are big enough to know better."
"Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have
not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his
eyes.
"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you
are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here--nothing
else can stand your weight--and besides, we cannot be sociable with you
away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high
counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face." So he sat down
on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red
blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet
fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed
his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honeycombed
bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth.
"What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your
legs, that they are gouged up so?"
"Infernal chilblains--I caught them clear up to the back of my head,
roosting out there under Newell's farm. But I love the place; I love it
as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I
feel when I am there."
We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked
tired, and spoke of it.
"Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And now I will tell you all
about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the
Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the
ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have
given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing
for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it!
haunt the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after
night. I even got other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for
nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to
come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever
got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that
perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around
through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering,
tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost
worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night I roused my
energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am
tired out--entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some
hope!" I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed: