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LET ME PUT THIS SIMPLY. Mark Twain remains to this day the funniest, most intelligent and entertaining person I ever saw on any stage or read in any book.
By then he was an old man, over seventy, but he wore his famous white suit, smoked his famous cigar, and constantly ran his long fingers through his famously unruly hair. His voice was as raspy as an old barn door. He sounded at all times as if he were about ten seconds away from erupting in a violent rage.
“Nothing needs reforming,” he said by way of beginning, “so much as other people’s habits.”
The audience roared in recognition of a universal truth.
“Best forget about the animals. Man is the only one with the true religion…”
The audience waited. Sure enough, the rest of the sentence arrived with perfect timing.
“Yep… several of them.”
He was amusing, biting, sarcastic, ferocious, and bitter in his repudiation of nearly everything and everyone. Elizabeth laughed as hard as I did—harder sometimes. I kept sneaking glances at her: shoulders shaking, handkerchief pressed to her mouth. I was happy she was having such a good time.
I was no author, no satirist, no raconteur, but I did know that the humor of this man Clemens was different. Besides being funny, every word he spoke was the absolute truth. The bigger the lies he pretended to tell, the more truthful the stories became.
When he talked about his struggles with trying to give up whiskey and his beloved cigars, we all laughed because we had struggles of our own, and he helped us see that they were ridiculous.
When he read from his book Huckleberry Finn, a passage in which Huck is bemoaning the fancy clothes the Widow Douglas has forced him to wear, we laughed because someone had once forced us into Sunday clothes too.
Occasionally Twain landed with both feet in an area that made this audience a little restless, as when he said:
“We had slavery when I was a boy. There was nothing wrong with slavery. The local pulpit told us God approved of it. If there were passages in the Bible that disapproved of slavery, they were not read aloud by the pastors.”
Twain paused. He looked deadly serious. I saw men shifting in their seats.
“I wonder how they could be so dishonest…”
Another long pause. And then: “Result of practice, I guess.”
The laughter came, and I saw Elizabeth dab at her eyes.
After more than an hour of effervescent brilliance, it became clear that Twain was exhausted, clinging to the podium. A man pushed an armchair in from the wings, and Twain asked our permission to sit down.
He sat down and lit a cigar, which drew another round of applause.
He was finishing up. When he spoke this time, I felt he was speaking directly to me.
“There’s a question I’m interested in,” he said. “ You-all might have an opinion on this. Why does a crowd of people stand by, smitten to the heart and miserable, and by ostentatious outward signs pretend to enjoy a lynching?”
The room fell so quiet you could hear the nervous cough of one man at the b
ack.
“Why does the crowd lift no hand or voice in protest?” Twain said. “Only because it would be unpopular to do it, I think. Each man is afraid of his neighbor’s disapproval—a thing which, to the general run of the race, is more dreaded than wounds and death.”
Still the audience sat rapt, unmoving.
“When there is to be a lynching, the people hitch up and come miles to see it, bringing their wives and children,” he said. “Really to see it? No—they come only because they are afraid to stay at home, lest it be noticed and offensively commented upon.
“No mob has any sand in the presence of a man known to be splendidly brave. When I was a boy, I saw a brave gentleman deride and insult a mob, and drive it away.
“This would lead one to think that perhaps the remedy for lynchings is to station a brave man in each affected community. But where shall these brave men be found? That is indeed a difficulty. There are not three hundred of them on the earth.”
That’s exactly what Mark Twain said that night. I looked around and saw almost everyone in that audience nodding their heads, as if they all agreed.
Chapter 57
