I believe that it is peculiarly appropriate that I should be allowed the privilege of joining my voice with the general voice of St. Louis and Missouri in welcoming to the Mississippi Valley and this part of the continent these illustrious visitors from France.
When La Salle came down this river a century and a quarter ago there was nothing on its banks but savages. He opened up this great river, and by his simple act was gathered in this great Louisiana territory. I would have done it myself for half the money.
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY
ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY COLONEL GEORGE HARVEY AT
DELMONICO’S, DECEMBER 5, 1905, TO CELEBRATE THE SEVENTIETH
ANNIVERSARY OF MR. CLEMENS’ BIRTH
Mr. Howells introduced Mr. Clemens:
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, and Colonel Harvey, I will try not
to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our
honored and, in view of his great age, our revered guest. I
will not say, ‘Oh King, live forever!’ but ‘Oh King, live as
long as you like!’” [Amid great applause and waving of napkins
all rise and drink to Mark Twain.]
Well, if I made that joke, it is the best one I ever made, and it is in the prettiest language, too.—I never can get quite to that height. But I appreciate that joke, and I shall remember it—and I shall use it when occasion requires.
I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No proper appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person born with high and delicate instincts—why, even the cradle wasn’t whitewashed—nothing ready at all. I hadn’t any hair, I hadn’t any teeth, I hadn’t any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like that. Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of a village—hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village—I—why, I was the only thing that had really happened there for months and months and months; and although I say it myself that shouldn’t, I came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village in more than two years. Well, those people came, they came with that curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion. Nobody asked them, and I shouldn’t have minded if anybody had paid me a compliment, but nobody did. Their opinions were all just green with prejudice, and I feel those opinions to this day. Well, I stood that as long as—well, you know I was born courteous, and I stood it to the limit. I stood it an hour, and then the worm turned. I was the worm; it was my turn to turn, and I turned. I knew very well the strength of my position; I knew that I was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person in that whole town, and I came out and said so: And they could not say a word. It was so true: They blushed; they were embarrassed. Well, that was the first after-dinner speech I ever made: I think it was after dinner.
It’s a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one. That was my cradle-song; and this is my swan-song, I suppose. I am used to swan-songs; I have sung them several times.
This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday.
The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach—unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right.