I want you to understand, old fellow, that it will be in its intention the highest public compliment, and emphatically so in your case, for it will be tendered you by a corporation of gentlemen, the majority of whom do not at all agree with the views on important questions which you have lately promulgated in speech and in writing, and with which you are identified to the public mind. They grant, of course, your right to hold and express those views, though for themselves they don't like 'em; but in awarding you the proposed laurel they will make no count of that whatever. Their action will appropriately signify simply and solely their estimate of your merit and rank as a man of letters, and so, as I say, the compliment of it will be of the pure, unadulterated quality.
Howells was not especially eager to go, and tried to conspire with Clemens to arrange some excuse which would keep them at home.
I remember with satisfaction [he wrote] our joint success in keeping away from the Concord Centennial in 1875, and I have been thinking we might help each other in this matter of the Yale Anniversary. What are your plans for getting left, or shall you trust to inspiration?
Their plans did not avail. Both Howells and Clemens went to New Haven to receive their honors.
When they had returned, Howells wrote formally, as became the new rank:
DEAR SIR,—I have long been an admirer of your complete works,
several of which I have read, and I am with you shoulder to shoulder
in the cause of foreign missions. I would respectfully request a
personal interview, and if you will appoint some day and hour most
inconvenient to you I will call at your baronial hall. I cannot
doubt, from the account of your courtesy given me by the Twelve
Apostles, who once visited you in your Hartford home and were
mistaken for a syndicate of lightning-rod men, that our meeting will
be mutually agreeable.
Yours truly,
W. D. HOWELLS.
DR. CLEMENS.
CCXVII. MARK TWAIN IN POLITICS
There was a campaign for the mayoralty of New York City that fall, with Seth Low on the Fusion ticket against Edward M. Shepard as the Tammany candidate. Mark Twain entered the arena to try to defeat Tammany Hall. He wrote and he spoke in favor of clean city government and police reform. He was savagely in earnest and openly denounced the clan of Croker, individually and collectively. He joined a society called 'The Acorns'; and on the 17th of October, at a dinner given by the order at the Waldorf-Astoria, delivered a fierce arraignment, in which he characterized Croker as the Warren Hastings of New York. His speech was really a set of extracts from Edmund Burke's great impeachment of Hastings, substituting always the name of Croker, and paralleling his career with that of the ancient boss of the East India Company.
It was not a humorous speech. It was too denunciatory for that. It probably contained less comic phrasing than any former effort. There is hardly even a suggestion of humor from beginning to end. It concluded with this paraphrase of Burke's impeachment: