I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech—it never names an historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates, you get left. A French speech is something like this:
“Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification before Heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of France and live; and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the 2d December, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of France, that but for him there had been no 17th March in history, no 12th October, nor 9th January, no 22d April, no 16th November, no 30th September, no 2d July, no 14th February, no 29th June, no 15th August, no 31st May—that but for him, France, the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day.”
I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent way:
“My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th January. The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have been in just proportion to the magnitude of the act itself. But for it there had been no 30th November—sorrowful spectacle! The grisly deed of the 16th June had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th June known existence; to it alone the 3d September was due, also the fatal 12th October. Shall we, then, be grateful for the 13th January, with its freight of death for you and me and all that breathe? Yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it alone—the blessed 25th December.”
It may be well enough to explain. The man of the 13th January is Adam; the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the grisly deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of October, the last mountaintops disappeared under the flood. When you go to church in France, you want to take your almanac with you—annotated.
STATISTICS
EXTRACT FROM “THE HISTORY OF THE SAVAGE CLUB”
During that period of gloom when domestic bereavement had
forced Mr. Clemens and his dear ones to secure the privacy they
craved until their wounds should heal, his address was known to
only a very few of his closest friends. One old friend in New
York, after vain efforts to get his address, wrote him a letter
addressed as follows
MARK TWAIN,
God Knows Where,
Try London.
The letter found him, and Mr. Clemens replied to the letter
expressing himself surprised and complimented that the person
who was credited with knowing his whereabouts should take so
much interest in him, adding: “Had the letter been addressed to
the care of the ‘other party,’ I would naturally have expected
to receive it without delay.”
His correspondent tried again, and addressed the second letter:
MARK TWAIN,
The Devil Knows Where,
Try London.
This found him also no less promptly.
On June 9, 1899, he consented to visit the Savage Club, London,
on condition that there was to be no publicity and no speech
was to be expected from him. The toastmaster, in proposing the
health of their guest, said that as a Scotchman, and therefore
as a born expert, he thought Mark Twain had little or no claim
to the title of humorist. Mr. Clemens had tried to be funny
but had failed, and his true role in life was statistics; that
he was a master of statistics, and loved them for their own
sake, and it would be the easiest task he ever undertook if he
would try to count all the real jokes he had ever made. While
the toastmaster was speaking, the members saw Mr. Clemens’s
eyes begin to sparkle and his cheeks to flush. He jumped up,
and made a characteristic speech.
Perhaps I am not a humorist, but I am a first-class fool—a simpleton; for up to this moment I have believed Chairman MacAlister to be a decent person whom I could allow to mix up with my friends and relatives. The exhibition he has just made of himself reveals him to be a scoundrel and a knave of the deepest dye. I have been cruelly deceived, and it serves me right for trusting a Scotchman. Yes, I do understand figures, and I can count. I have counted the words in MacAlister’s drivel (I certainly cannot call it a speech), and there were exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. I also carefully counted the lies—there were exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. Therefore, I leave MacAlister to his fate.
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well myself.