Mark Twain Biography - Audio Books

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This is my Part 51 of Mark Twain’s Biography

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CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.–XIV.

BY MARK TWAIN.

Section 4 of 4

…If the Emperor had been at my table, he would not have suffered from my silence, he would only have suffered from the sorrows of his own solitude. If I were not too old to travel, I would go to Berlin and introduce the etiquette of my own table, which tallies with the etiquette observable at other royal tables. I would say, “Invite me again, your Majesty, and give me a chance”; then I would courteously waive rank and do all the talking myself. I thank his Majesty for his kind message, and am proud to have it and glad to express my sincere reciprocation of its sentiments.

Rev. Joseph T. Harris and I have been visiting General Sickles. Once, twenty or twenty-five years ago, just as Harris was coming out of his gate Sunday morning to walk to his church and preach, a telegram was put into his hand. He read it immediately, and then, in a manner, collapsed. It said: “General Sickles died last night at midnight.”

It wasn’t so. But no matter–it was so to Harris at the time. He walked along–walked to the church–but his mind was far away. All his affection and homage and worship of his General had come to the fore. His heart was full of these emotions. He hardly knew where he was. In his pulpit, he stood up and began the service, but with a voice over which he had almost no command.

The congregation had never seen him thus moved, before, in his pulpit. They sat there and gazed at him and wondered what was the matter; because he was now reading, in this broken voice and with occasional tears trickling down his face, what to them seemed a quite unemotional chapter–that one about Moses begat Aaron, and Aaron begat Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy begat St. Peter, and St. Peter begat Cain, and Cain begat Abel–and he was going along with this, and half crying–his voice continually breaking.

The congregation left the church that morning without being able to account for this most extraordinary thing–as it seemed to them. That a man who had been a soldier for more than four years, and who had preached in that pulpit so many, many times on really moving subjects, without even the quiver of a lip, should break all down over the Begats, they couldn’t understand. But there it is–any one can see how such a mystery as that would arouse the curiosity of those people to the boiling-point.

Harris has had many adventures. He has more adventures in a year than anybody else has in five. One Saturday night he noticed a bottle on his uncle’s dressing-bureau. He thought the label said “Hair Restorer,” and he took it in his room and gave his head a good drenching and sousing with it and carried it back and thought no more about it. Next morning when he got up his head was a bright green! He sent around everywhere and couldn’t get a substitute preacher, so he had to go to his church himself and preach–and he did it.

He hadn’t a sermon in his barrel–as it happened–of any lightsome character, so he had to preach a very grave one–a very serious one–and it made the matter worse. The gravity of the sermon did not harmonize with the gayety of his head, and the people sat all through it with handkerchiefs stuffed in their mouths to try to keep down their joy. And Harris told me that he was sure he never had seen his congregation–the whole body of his congregation–the _entire_ body of his congregation–absorbed in interest in his sermon, from beginning to end, before.

Always there had been an aspect of indifference, here and there, or wandering, somewhere; but this time there was nothing of the kind. Those people sat there as if they thought, “Good for this day and train only: we must have all there is of this show, not waste any of it.” And he said that when he came down out of the pulpit more people waited to shake him by the hand and tell him what a good sermon it was, than ever before. And it seemed a pity that these people should do these fictions in such a place–right in the church–when it was quite plain they were not interested in the sermon at all; they only wanted to get a near view of his head.

Well, Harris said–no, Harris didn’t say, _I_ say, that as the days went on and Sunday followed Sunday, the interest in Harris’s hair grew and grew; because it didn’t stay merely and monotonously green, it took on deeper and deeper shades of green; and then it would change and become reddish, and would go from that to some other color–purplish, yellowish, bluish, and so on–but it was never a solid color.

It was always mottled. And each Sunday it was a little more interesting than it was the Sunday before–and Harris’s head became famous, and people came from New York, and Boston, and South Carolina, and Japan, and so on, to look. There wasn’t seating-capacity for all the people that came while his head was undergoing these various and fascinating mottlings. And it was a good thing in several ways, because the business had been languishing a little, and now a lot of people joined the church so that they could have the show, and it was the beginning of a prosperity for that church which has never diminished in all these years.

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This ends Part 51 of the “Mark Twain Biography” of Chapter XIV, Section 4 of 4.

The next article is Part 52, which is Chapter XV.

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