He referred to the portion of his speech concerning the motto on the coins. He had freely expressed similar sentiments on other public occasions, and he had received a letter criticizing him for saying that we do not really trust in God in any financial matter.
“I wanted to answer it,” he said; “but I destroyed it. It didn't seem worth noticing.”
I asked how the motto had originated.
“About 1853 some idiot in Congress wanted to announce to the world that this was a religious nation, and proposed putting it there, and no other Congressman had courage enough to oppose it, of course. It took courage in those days to do a thing like that; but I think the same thing would happen to-day.”
“Still the country has become broader. It took a brave man before the Civil War to confess he had read the 'Age of Reason'.”
“So it did, and yet that seems a mild book now. I read it first when I was a cub pilot, read it with fear and hesitation, but marveling at its fearlessness and wonderful power. I read it again a year or two ago, for some reason, and was amazed to see how tame it had become. It seemed that Paine was apologizing everywhere for hurting the feelings of the reader.”
He drifted, naturally, into a discussion of the Knickerbocker Trust Company's suspension, which had tied up some fifty-five thousand dollars of his capital, and wondered how many were trusting in God for the return of these imperiled sums. Clemens himself, at this time, did not expect to come out whole from that disaster. He had said very little when the news came, though it meant that his immediate fortunes were locked up, and it came near stopping the building activities at Redding. It was only the smaller things of life that irritated him. He often met large calamities with a serenity which almost resembled indifference. In the Knickerbocker situation he even found humor as time passed, and wrote a number of gay letters, some of which found their way into print.
It should be added that in the end there was no loss to any of the Knickerbocker depositors.