(WITH LETTERS CONCERNING THEM FROM MARK
TWAIN AND ELSIE LESLIE LYDE)
Mark Twain’s Letter
Hartford, Oct. 5, ’89.
Dear Elsie: The way of it was this. Away last spring, Gillette[[1]] and I pooled intellects on this proposition: to get up a pleasant surprise of some kind for you against your next visit--the surprise to take the form of a tasteful and beautiful testimonial of some sort or other, which should express somewhat of the love we felt for you. Together we hit upon just the right thing--a pair of slippers. Either one of us could have thought of a single slipper, but it took both of us to think of two slippers. In fact, one of us did think of one slipper, and then, quick as a flash, the other thought of the other one. It shows how wonderful the human mind is. It is really paleontological; you give one mind a bone, and the other one instantly divines the rest of the animal.
Gillette embroidered his slipper with astonishing facility and splendor, but I have been a long time pulling through with mine. You see, it was my very first attempt at art, and I couldn’t rightly get the hang of it along at first. And then I was so busy that I couldn’t get a chance to work at it at home, and they wouldn’t let me embroider on the cars; they said it made the other passengers afraid. They didn’t like the light that flared into my eye when I had an inspiration. And even the most fair-minded people doubted me when I explained what it was I was making--especially brakemen. Brakemen always swore at it, and carried on, the way ignorant people do, about art. They wouldn’t take my word that it was a slipper; they said they believed it was a snowshoe that had some kind of a disease.
But I have pulled through, and within twenty-four hours of the time I told you I would--day before yesterday. There ought to be a key to the designs, but I haven’t had time to get one up. However, if you will lay the work before you with the forecastle pointing north, I will begin at that end and explain the whole thing, layer by layer, so that you can understand it.
I began with that first red bar, and without ulterior design, or plan of any sort--just as I would begin a Prince and Pauper, or any other tale. And mind you it is the easiest and surest way; because if you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them--you can’t help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so, first thing you know, there’s your book all finished up and never cost you an idea. Well, the red stripe, with a bias stitch, naturally suggested a blue one with a perpendicular stitch, and I slammed it in, though when it came daylight I saw it was green--which didn’t make any difference, because green and blue are much the same, anyway, and in fact from a purely moral point of view are regarded by the best authorities as identical. Well, if you will notice, a blue perpendicular stitch always suggests a ropy red involved stitch, like a family of angle-worms trying to climb in under each other to keep warm--it would suggest that, every time, without the author of the slipper ever having to think about it at all.
Now at that point, young Dr. Root came in, and, of course, he was interested in the slipper right away, because he has always had a passion for art himself, but has never had a chance to try, because his folks are opposed to it and superstitious about it, and have done all they could to keep him back; and so he was eager to take a hand and see what he could do. And it was beautiful to see him sit there and tell Mrs. Clemens what had been happening while we were off on summer vacation, and hold the slipper up toward the end of his nose, and forget the sordid world, and imagine the canvas was a “subject” with a scalp wound, and nimbly whirl in that lovely surgical stitch which you see there--and never hesitating a moment in his talk except to say “Ouch” when he stuck himself, and then going right on again as smooth and easy as nothing. Yes, it was a charming spectacle. And it was real art, too--realistic, just native untaught genius; you can see the very scalp itself, showing through between the stitches.
Well, next I threw in that sheaf of green rods which the lictors used to carry before the Roman consuls to lick them with when they didn’t behave--they turned blue in the morning, but that is the way green always acts.