To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I have
been professionally literary something more than forty years. There have been
many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the link in the chain
appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most CONSPICUOUS link in
that chain. BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not any more important than its
predecessors. All the other links have an inconspicuous look, except the
crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors in making me literary they are all of
the one size, the crossing of the Rubicon included.
I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead up to
it and brought it about.
The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a
recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar's day to find the first
one. To save space I will go back only a couple of generations and start with an
incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve and a half years old, my father died.
It was in the spring. The summer came, and brought with it an epidemic of
measles. For a time a child died almost every day. The village was paralyzed
with fright, distress, despair. Children that were not smitten with the disease
were imprisoned in their homes to save them from the infection. In the homes
there were no cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no singing but of
solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no
laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush. I was
a prisoner. My soul was steeped in this awful dreariness--and in fear. At some
time or other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me to the marrow,
and I said to myself, "There, I've got it! and I shall die." Life on these
miserable terms was not worth living, and at last I made up my mind to get the
disease and have it over, one way or the other. I escaped from the house and
went to the house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill with the
malady. When the chance offered I crept into his room and got into bed with him.
I was discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity. But I had the
disease; they could not take that from me. I came near to dying. The whole
village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; and not
only once a day, but several times. Everybody believed I would die; but on the
fourteenth day a change came for the worse and they were disappointed.
This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got well
my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer. She was tired
of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of the measles decided
her to put me into more masterful hands than hers.
I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain
which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road, but I could not
know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or even that it had one, I
was indifferent. Also contented.
A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and
seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a CIRCUMSTANCE;
Circumstance is man's master--and when Circumstance commands, he must obey; he
may argue the matter--that is his privilege, just as it is the honorable
privilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitation--but it
won't do any good, he must OBEY. I wandered for ten years, under the guidance
and dictatorship of Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I
worked several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one
about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage up the
great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through the heart of an
enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a romantic land
where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the museum varieties, and
where the alligator and the crocodile and the monkey seemed as much at home as
if they were in the Zoo. Also, he told an astonishing tale about COCA, a
vegetable product of miraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and
so strength-giving that the native of the mountains of the Madeira region would
tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other
sustenance.
I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to open
up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed that dream, and
tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid enterprise upon
an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A person may PLAN as much as he wants
to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician
CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes the matter off his hands. At last Circumstance
came to my help. It was in this way. Circumstance, to help or hurt another man,
made him lose a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me
find it. I advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day. This was
another turning-point, another link.
Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the
Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty- dollar basis and been
obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools there--shoals and shoals
of them--but they were not of my kind. I was the only one of my kind.
Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a partner.
Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT--his natural disposition. His temperament is
not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he has no authority over it, neither
is he responsible for its acts. He cannot change it, nothing can change it,
nothing can modify it--except temporarily. But it won't stay modified. It is
permanent, like the color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes
are gray in certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when
that stress is removed.
A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of a
different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in Caesar's way,
his temperament would not have made him start for the Amazon. His temperament
would have compelled him to do something with the money, but not that. It might
have made him advertise the note--and WAIT. We can't tell. Also, it might have
made him go to New York and buy into the Government, with results that would
leave Tweed nothing to learn when it came his turn.
Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me
what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is the case of
the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one. Training,
experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalt him
that people will think he is a mule, but they will be mistaken. Artificially he
IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain
one.
By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and
reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and without
asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In all that time my
temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I have been punished many and many
a time, and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but these
tortures have been of no value to me; I still do the thing commanded by
Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect afterward. Always violently. When I am
reflecting, on these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.
I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My idea
was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I inquired, and found
there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that there never had BEEN one leaving
for Para. I reflected. A policeman came and asked me what I was doing, and I
told him. He made me move on, and said if he caught me reflecting in the public
street again he would run me in.
After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with another
turning-point of my life--a new link. On my way down, I had made the
acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he consented. I
became a pilot.
By and by Circumstance came again--introducing the Civil War, this time, in
order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary profession. The
boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.
Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh link. My
brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of Nevada, and he invited
me to go with him and help him in his office. I accepted.
In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into the
mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea. The idea was
to advance me another step toward literature. For amusement I scribbled things
for the Virginia City ENTERPRISE. One isn't a printer ten years without setting
up acres of good and bad literature, and learning--unconsciously at first,
consciously later--to discriminate between the two, within his mental
limitations; and meantime he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a
"style." One of my efforts attracted attention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me
and put me on its staff.
And so I became a journalist--another link. By and by Circumstance and the
Sacramento UNION sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six months, to
write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of extraneous matter that
hadn't anything to do with sugar. But it was this extraneous matter that helped
me to another link.
It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I did.
And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the world, and now
Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me upon the platform and
furnished me the means. So I joined the "Quaker City Excursion."
When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier-- with the
LAST link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: I was asked
to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, and called it THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. Thus I became
at last a member of the literary guild. That was forty-two years ago, and I have
been a member ever since. Leaving the Rubicon incident away back where it
belongs, I can say with truth that the reason I am in the literary profession is
because I had the measles when I was twelve years old.
