Mark Twain’s Memoirs - Part 5
The Memoirs of Mark Twain continue as his Autobiography…
Welcome to Part 5
James Lampton floated, all his days, in a tinted mist of magnificent dreams, and died at last without seeing one of them realized. I saw him last in 1884, when it had been twenty-six years since I ate the basin of raw turnips and washed them down with a bucket of water in his house.
He was become old and white-headed, but he entered to me in the same old breezy way of his earlier life, and he was all there, yet–not a detail wanting: the happy light in his eye, the abounding hope in his heart, the persuasive tongue, the miracle-breeding imagination–they were all there; and before I could turn around he was polishing up his Aladdin’s lamp and flashing the secret riches of the world before me. I said to myself, “I did not overdraw him by a shade, I set him down as he was; and he is the same man to-day. Cable will recognize him.”
I asked him to excuse me a moment, and ran into the next room, which was Cable’s; Cable and I were stumping the Union on a reading tour. I said–
“I am going to leave your door open, so that you can listen. There is a
man in there who is interesting.”
I went back and asked Lampton what he was doing now. He began to tell me of a “small venture” he had begun in New Mexico through his son; “only a little thing–a mere trifle–partly to amuse my leisure, partly to keep my capital from lying idle, but mainly to develop the boy–develop the boy; fortune’s wheel is ever revolving, he may have to work for his living some day–as strange things have happened in this world.
But it’s only a little thing–a mere trifle, as I said.”
And so it was–as he began it. But under his deft hands it grew, and blossomed, and spread–oh, beyond imagination. At the end of half an hour he finished; finished with the remark, uttered in an adorably
languid manner:
“Yes, it is but a trifle, as things go nowadays–a bagatelle–but amusing. It passes the time. The boy thinks great things of it, but he is young, you know, and imaginative; lacks the experience which comes of
handling large affairs, and which tempers the fancy and perfects the judgment.
I suppose there’s a couple of millions in it, possibly three, but not more, I think; still, for a boy, you know, just starting in life, it is not bad. I should not want him to make a fortune–let that come later. It could turn his head, at his time of life, and in many ways be a damage to him.”
Then he said something about his having left his pocketbook lying on the table in the main drawing-room at home, and about its being after banking hours, now, and–
I stopped him, there, and begged him to honor Cable and me by being our guest at the lecture–with as many friends as might be willing to do us the like honor. He accepted. And he thanked me as a prince might who had granted us a grace.
The reason I stopped his speech about the tickets was because I saw that he was going to ask me to furnish them to him and let him pay next day; and I knew that if he made the debt he would pay it if he had to pawn his clothes. After a little further chat he shook hands heartily and affectionately, and took his leave. Cable put his head in at the door, and said–
“That was Colonel Sellers.”
The conclusion to Part 5.
Next is Part 6 of the Mark Twain Memoirs
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