Publication information |
Source: Mark Twain’s Letters Source type: book Document type: letter Document title: “[To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford]” Author(s): Twain, Mark Editor(s): Paine, Albert Bigelow Volume number: 2 Publisher: Harper and Brothers Publishers Place of publication: New York, New York Year of publication: 1917 Pagination: 713-16 |
Citation |
Twain, Mark. “[To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford].” Mark Twain’s Letters. Ed. Albert Bigelow Paine. Vol. 2. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1917: pp. 713-16. |
Transcription |
full text of letter; excerpt of book |
Keywords |
Mark Twain (correspondence); McKinley assassination (personal response); McKinley assassination (public response: criticism); society (criticism); Leon Czolgosz (mental health); society (mental health); lawlessness (mob rule); anarchism (compared with lynching). |
Named persons |
Shelby M. Cullom; Humbert I; William McKinley; Mark Twain; Joseph H. Twichell. |
Notes |
The following note by the editor accompanies the letter (p. 713): “The
assassination of President McKinley occurred September 6, 1901. Such an
event would naturally stir Mark Twain to comment on human nature in general.
His letter to Twichell is as individual as it is sound in philosophy.
At what period of his own life, or under what circumstances, he made the
long journey with tragic intent there is no means of knowing now. There
is no other mention of it elsewhere in the records that survive him.”
From title page: Arranged with Comment by Albert Bigelow Paine. |
Document |
[To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford]
AMPERSAND, Tuesday, (Sept. 10, 1901)
DEAR JOE,—It
is another off day, but tomorrow I shall resume work to a certainty,
and bid a long farewell to letter-scribbling.
The news of the President looks decidedly hopeful,
and we are all glad, and the household faces are much improved, as to cheerfulness.
Oh, the talk in the newspapers! Evidently the Human Race is the same
old Human Race. And how unjust, and unreflectingly discriminating, the talkers
are. Under the unsettling effects of powerful emotion the talkers are saying
wild things, crazy things—they are out of themselves, and do not know it; they
are temporarily insane, yet with one voice they declare the assassin sane—a
man who has been entertaining fiery and reason-debauching maggots in his head
for weeks and months. Why, no one is sane, straight along, year in and year
out, and we all know it. Our insanities are of varying sorts, and express themselves
in varying forms—fortunately harmless forms as a rule—but in whatever form they
occur an immense upheaval of feeling can at any time topple us distinctly over
the sanity-line for a little while; and then if our form happens to be of the
murderous kind we must look out—and so must the spectator.
This ass with the unpronounceable name was probably
more insane than usual this week or two back, and may get back upon his bearings
by and by, but he was over the sanity-border when he shot the President. It
is pos- [713][714] sible that it has taken him
the whole interval since the murder of the King of Italy to get insane enough
to attempt the President’s life. Without a doubt some thousands of men have
been meditating the same act in the same interval, but new and strong interests
have intervened and diverted their over-excited minds long enough to give them
a chance to settle, and tranquilize, and get back upon a healthy level again.
Every extraordinary occurrence unsettles the heads of hundreds of thousands
of men for a few moments or hours or days. If there had been ten kings around
when Humbert fell they would have been in great peril for a day or more—and
from men in whose presence they would have been quite safe after the excess
of their excitement had had an interval in which to cool down. I bought a revolver
once and travelled twelve hundred miles to kill a man. He was away. He was gone
a day. With nothing else to do, I had to stop and think—and did. Within
an hour—within half of it—I was ashamed of myself—and felt unspeakably ridiculous.
I do not know what to call it if I was not insane. During a whole week my head
was in a turmoil night and day fierce enough and exhausting enough to upset
a stronger reason than mine.
All over the world, every day, there are some
millions of men in that condition temporarily. And in that time there is always
a moment—perhaps only a single one—when they would do murder if their man was
at hand. If the opportunity comes a shade too late, the chances are that it
has come permanently too late. Opportunity seldom comes exactly at the supreme
moment. This saves a million lives a day in the world—for sure.
No Ruler is ever slain but the tremendous details
of it are ravenously devoured by a hundred thousand men whose minds dwell, unaware,
near the temporary-insanity frontier—and over they go, now! There is a day—two
days—three—during which no Ruler would be safe from perhaps the half of them;
and there is a single moment wherein he would not be safe from any of them,
no doubt. [714][715]
It may take this present shooting-case six months
to breed another ruler-tragedy, but it will breed it. There is at least one
mind somewhere which will brood, and wear, and decay itself to the killing-point
and produce that tragedy.
Every negro burned at the stake unsettles the
excitable brain of another one—I mean the inflaming details of his crime, and
the lurid theatricality of his exit do it—and the duplicate crime follows; and
that begets a repetition, and that one another one—and so on. Every lynching-account
unsettles the brains of another set of excitable white men, and lights another
pyre—115 lynchings last year, 102 inside of 8 months this year; in ten years
this will be habit, on these terms.
Yes, the wild talk you see in the papers! And
from men who are sane when not upset by overwhelming excitement. A U. S. Senator—Cullom—wants
this Buffalo criminal lynched! It would breed other lynchings—of men who are
not dreaming of committing murders, now, and will commit none if Cullom will
keep quiet and not provide the exciting cause.
And a District Attorney wants a law which shall
punish with death attempts upon a President’s life—this, mind you, as
a deterrent. It would have no effect—or the opposite one. The lunatic’s mind-space
is all occupied—as mine was—with the matter in hand; there is no room
in it for reflections upon what may happen to him. That comes after the
crime.
It is the noise the attempt would make
in the world that would breed the subsequent attempts, by unsettling the rickety
minds of men who envy the criminal his vast notoriety—his obscure name tongued
by stupendous Kings and Emperors—his picture printed everywhere, the trivialest
details of his movements, what he eats, what he drinks; how he sleeps, what
he says, cabled abroad over the whole globe at cost of fifty thousand dollars
a day—and he only a lowly shoemaker yesterday!—like the assassin of the President
of France—in debt [715][716] three francs to his
landlady, and insulted by her—and to-day she is proud to be able to say she
knew him “as familiarly as you know your own brother,” and glad to stand till
she drops and pour out columns and pages of her grandeur and her happiness upon
the eager interviewer.
Nothing will check the lynchings and ruler-murder
but absolute silence—the absence of pow-pow about them. How are you going to
manage that? By gagging every witness and jamming him into a dungeon for life;
by abolishing all newspapers; by exterminating all newspaper men; and by extinguishing
God’s most elegant invention, the Human Race. It is quite simple, quite easy,
and I hope you will take a day off and attend to it, Joe.
I blow a kiss to you, and am
Lovingly Yours,
MARK.