Mark Twain's work was always of a kind to make people talk, always important, even when it was mere humor.Yet it was seldom that; there was always wisdom under it, and purpose, and these things gave it dynamic force and enduring life.Some of his aphorisms--so quaint in form as to invite laughter--are yet fairly startling in their purport.His paraphrase, "When in doubt, tell the truth," is of this sort."Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it," he once said to the writer, apropos of a little girl's remark.His daily speech was full of such things.The secret of his great charm was his great humanity and the gentle quaintness and sincerity of his utterance.
His work did not cease when the pressing need of money came to an end.
He was full of ideas, and likely to begin a new article or story at any time.He wrote and published a number of notable sketches, articles, stories, even books, during these later years, among them that marvelous short story--"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg." In that story, as in most of his later work, he proved to the world that he was much more than a humorist--that he was, in fact, a great teacher, moralist, philosopher--the greatest, perhaps, of his age.
His life at Stormfield--he had never seen the place until the day of his arrival, June 18, 1908--was a peaceful and serene old age.Not that he was really old; he never was that.His step, his manner, his point of view, were all and always young.He was fond of children and frequently had them about him.He delighted in games--especially in billiards--and in building the house at Stormfield the billiard-room was first considered.He had a genuine passion for the sport; without it his afternoon was not complete.His mornings he was likely to pass in bed, smoking--he was always smoking--and attending to his correspondence and reading.History and the sciences interested him, and his bed was strewn with biographies and stories of astronomical and geological research.
The vastness of distances and periods always impressed him.He had no head for figures, but he would labor for hours over scientific calculations, trying to compass them and to grasp their gigantic import.
I remember once finding him highly elated over the fact that he had figured out for himself the length in hours and minutes of a "light year." He showed me the pages covered with figures, and was more proud of them than if they had been the pages of an immortal story.Then we played billiards, but even his favorite game could not make him altogether forget his splendid achievement.
It was on the day before Christmas, 1909, that heavy bereavement once more came into the life of Mark Twain.His daughter Jean, long subject to epileptic attacks, was seized with a convulsion while in her bath and died before assistance reached her.He was dazed by the suddenness of the blow.His philosophy sustained him.He was glad, deeply glad for the beautiful girl that had been released.
"I never greatly envied anybody but the dead," he said, when he had looked at her."I always envy the dead."The coveted estate of silence, time's only absolute gift, it was the one benefaction he had ever considered worth while.
Yet the years were not unkindly to Mark Twain.They brought him sorrow, but they brought him likewise the capacity and opportunity for large enjoyment, and at the last they laid upon him a kind of benediction.
Naturally impatient, he grew always more gentle, more generous, more tractable and considerate as the seasons passed.His final days may be said to have been spent in the tranquil light of a summer afternoon.
His own end followed by a few months that of his daughter.There were already indications that his heart was seriously affected, and soon after Jean's death he sought the warm climate of Bermuda.But his malady made rapid progress, and in April he returned to Stormfield.He died there just a week later, April 21, 1910.
Any attempt to designate Mark Twain's place in the world's literary history would be presumptuous now.Yet I cannot help thinking that he will maintain his supremacy in the century that produced him.I think so because, of all the writers of that hundred years, his work was the most human his utterances went most surely to the mark.In the long analysis of the ages it is the truth that counts, and he never approximated, never compromised, but pronounced those absolute verities to which every human being of whatever rank must instantly respond.
His understanding of subjective human nature--the vast, unwritten life within--was simply amazing.Such knowledge he acquired at the fountainhead--that is, from himself.He recognized in himself an extreme example of the human being with all the attributes of power and of weakness, and he made his exposition complete.
The world will long miss Mark Twain; his example and his teaching will be neither ignored nor forgotten.Genius defies the laws of perspective and looms larger as it recedes.The memory of Mark Twain remains to us a living and intimate presence that today, even more than in life, constitutes a stately moral bulwark reared against hypocrisy and superstition--a mighty national menace to sham.
MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS