(I do not mention a couple of colds in my head, because I hardly mind them as much as I would the erysipelas, but between you and me I would prefer it if they were rights and lefts.)
And then there is another thing. I have always taken a pride in earning my living in outside places and spending it in Hartford; I have said that no good citizen would live on his own people, but go forth and make it sultry for other communities and fetch home the result; and now at this late day I find myself in the crushed and bleeding position of fattening myself upon the spoils of my brethren! Can I support such grief as this? (This is literary emotion, you understand. Take the money at the door just the same.)
Once more I welcome you to Hartford, Raymond, but as for me let me stay at home and blush.
Yours truly, MARK.
The play was equally successful wherever it went. It made what in that day was regarded as a fortune. One hundred thousand dollars is hardly too large an estimate of the amount divided between author and actor. Raymond was a great actor in that part, as he interpreted it, though he did not interpret it fully, or always in its best way. The finer side, the subtle, tender side of Colonel Sellers, he was likely to overlook. Yet, with a natural human self-estimate, Raymond believed he had created a much greater part than Mark Twain had written. Doubtless from the point of view of a number of people this was so, though the idea, was naturally obnoxious to Clemens. In course of time their personal relations ceased.
Clemens that winter gave another benefit for Father Hawley. In reply to an invitation to appear in behalf of the poor, he wrote that he had quit the lecture field, and would not return to the platform unless driven there by lack of bread. But he added:
By the spirit of that remark I am debarred from delivering this proposed lecture, and so I fall back upon the letter of it, and emerge upon the platform for this last and final time because I am confronted by a lack of bread-among Father Hawley's flock.
He made an introductory speech at an old-fashioned spelling-bee, given at the Asylum Hill Church; a breezy, charming talk of which the following is a sample:
I don't see any use in spelling a word right—and never did. I mean
I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of
spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook
all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing. I
have a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me;
there is such a breezy, unfettered originality about his
orthography. He always spells “kow” with a large “K.” Now that is
just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It
gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests
to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow.
He took part in the contest, and in spite of his early reputation,
was spelled down on the word “chaldron,” which he spelled
“cauldron,” as he had been taught, while the dictionary used as
authority gave that form as second choice.
Another time that winter, Clemens read before the Monday Evening Club a paper on “Universal Suffrage,” which is still remembered by the surviving members of that time. A paragraph or two will convey its purport: