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I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories
had been wholly unoccupied for years, until I came. The place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and
silence. I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead, that first night I climbed up to my quarters.
For the first time in my life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible
cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.
I was glad
enough when I reached my room and locked out the mould and the darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat
down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes,
and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent
for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos,
the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil
patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying foot-steps of the last belated straggler died
away in the distance and left no sound behind.
The fire had burned low.
A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to
do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening
to the rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep.
I slept profoundly,
but how long I do not know. All at once I found myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still. All
but my own heart -- I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as
if some one were pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets slipped deliberately away, till my
breast was uncovered. Then with a great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, listened, waited. Once
more that steady pull began, and once more I lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At last
I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt
a faint tug, and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain -- it grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted,
and for the third time the blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of the bed! Beaded drops of
sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room -- the step of an
elephant, it seemed to me -- it was not like anything human. But it was moving FROM me -- there was relief in that. I heard
it approach the door -- pass out without moving bolt or lock -- and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the
floors and joists till they creaked again as it passed -- and then silence reigned once more.
When my excitement had
calmed, I said to myself, "This is a dream -- simply a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself
that it WAS a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when
I found that the locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from
my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire, when -- down went the pipe out of my nerveless
fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side
by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison mine was but an infant's'! Then I had HAD a visitor,
and the elephant tread was explained.
I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long time,
peering into the darkness, and listening. Then I heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across
the floor; then the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response to the concussion. In distant parts
of the building I heard the muffled slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among
the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard
the clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the clanking grew nearer -- while it wearily climbed
the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step
as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and
the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded -- that
I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent
light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped -- two of them upon
my face and one upon the pillow. They spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had turned to gouts of blood
as they fell -- I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands,
floating bodiless in the air -- floating a moment and then disappearing. The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds,
and a solemn stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly
raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand! All strength went from me apparently,
and I fell back like a stricken invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment -- it seemed to pass to the door and go out.
When
everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were
aged with a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation
of that great footprint in the ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up and the broad gas flame
was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and nearer,
along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. The tread reached my very door and paused -- the light had dwindled
to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of
air fan my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale
glow stole over the Thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape -- an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great
sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed
above me!
All my misery vanished -- for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance.
My cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was
so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. I said:
"Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I
have been scared to death for the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish I had a chair -- Here,
here, don't try to sit down in that thing!
But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him, and down he went
-- I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.
"Stop, stop, You'll ruin ev--"
Too late again. There was another
crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements.
"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all?
Do you want to ruin all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--"
But it was no use. Before I could
arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin.
"Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you
come lumbering about the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death, and then when I
overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theater,
and not even there if the nudity were of YOUR sex, you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on.
And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered
up the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself -- you are
big enough to know better."
"Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have not had a chance
to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his eyes.
"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh
with you. And you are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here -- nothing else can stand your weight -- and
besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high counting-house
stool and gossip with you face to face."
So he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of
my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable.
Then he crossed his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms of his prodigious feet to
the grateful warmth.
"What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs, that they are gouged
upso?"
"Infernal chillblains -- I caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out there under Newell's farm.
But I love the place; I love it as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am there."
We
talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked tired, and spoke of it. "Tired?" he said. "Well, I should
think so. And now I will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the Petrified Man that
lies across the street there in the Museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have
given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify
them into it! -- haunt the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after night. I even got other spirits to
help me. But it did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to come over the way and
haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that perdition
could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering,
tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night
I roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am tired out -- entirely fagged out. Give
me, I beseech you, give me some hope!"
I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:
"This transcends
everything -- everything that ever did occur! Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing
-- you have been haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself -- the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany!
[Footnote by Twain: A
fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine" Cardiff
Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds
at a museum in Albany.]
Confound it, don't you know your own remains?"
I never saw such an eloquent look of
shame, of pitiable humiliation, overspread a countenance before.
The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:
"Honestly, IS that true?"
"As true as I am sitting here."
He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the
mantel, then stood irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons pockets should
have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast), and finally said:
"Well -- I NEVER felt so absurd before.
The Petrified Man has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost! My son, if there is
any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how YOU would feel if
you had made such an ass of yourself."
I heard his, stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into
the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow -- and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket
and my bath tub.
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Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Mark Twain is an American enigma. His writings present the American Dream and the American Tragedy, the heights of humane
compassion and the depths of social sadism. Why does this man of wealth write of the corruption of money? Why does this man
who seems so cynical about the capacity of the human race speak out against slavery and imperialism? Why does this man even
bother to write? So often do Twain's writings present the reader with irreconcilable opposites that it's hard to conceive
of a cohesive theme behind Twain's works. But if one takes Twain as a whole, observing the maturation in his writing, but
more importantly, the maturation in his subject matter, a cohesive theme does appear. This theme is integrity. It is not the
subject of any one work, but a theme arising from a compilation of essay after novel after short story.
Samuel Clemens was a self-made man. From Hannibal, Missouri, he slowly made his way around the country and the world, both
marrying into the wealth of Olivia Langdon's family, and writing and marketing his way to independent wealth. Twain's tendencies
as an entrepreneur were obvious through his heavy investing in the Paige Compositor, a type setting machine, and various other
technologies. The very fact that Twain sold his novels by subscription shows that he was not a starving artist, but rather
a level-headed businessman looking out for his family's and his own well-being. Selling by subscription was viewed as materialistic,
profiteering, and unworthy of literature. Reputable publishing houses, newspapers, magazines, and the literary elite all frowned
upon subscription-book publishing -- the primary method Twain used to publish his novels (Rasmussen 448). This method of publishing,
however, did yield the greatest profits. So Mark Twain was, at several different points in his life, a wealthy man.
Mark Twain experienced both wealth and debt, riches and ruin in his life. He saw himself rise to riches through his own
labor, and then fall into debt through bad decision-making. When Twain lost his wealth, however, he did not sacrifice his
integrity. Olivia told Twain to save that which was important - his name. This was not stubborn pride; it meant that Twain
should dig himself out of debt penny by penny in order to maintain his integrity. Only then would the American public continue
to cherish him. The heroism of accepting the financial responsibilities of his own mistakes enamored the public of Mark Twain.
Twain could have declared bankruptcy, probably kept his house, and been on his way to success again if he only shirked his
responsibility and declared bankruptcy. Instead, he decided to do what he thought was right and surrender the easy life and
half a decade of income to pay his debts. Although Mark Twain's publishing firm, Charles L. Webster and Company declared bankruptcy
in 1894, Twain himself never declared personal bankruptcy (Rasmussen 25). Twain saw the truth in his wife's advice; he did
dig himself out of debt, he did maintain his integrity, and he continues to be cherished by Americans even today.
Twain's integrity presents itself in subjects other than wealth. One of the most startling paradoxes in Twain's writing
involves his later years - those which are darker and more cynical. Twain seems to have two major themes in this part of his
life. One is the corrupted and weak nature of humankind, and the other is a political diatribe against what Twain considers
immoral social behavior, the most obvious example being imperialism. Both of these trends can be found in earlier writings
to a lesser extent, but as Twain matured, these themes became more pronounced and outpaced his reputation as a humorist.
Twain seems completely and totally disillusioned with mankind. He considers them weak, fickle, and uncritical. In "Corn-Pone
Opinions," Twain attacks humans for their tendency to adopt socially prevalent opinions uncritically. The basic idea is that
a man's opinions are dependent upon where he gets his "corn-pone," or, in other words, his opinions are determined by his
material conditions. For example, a slave in the south could not vocally have the opinions of an abolitionist - it would mean
certain death. However, this type of corn-pone opinion is not that bad. It is an inalterable tendency of men. Twain does not
concentrate on the honesty versus death type of decisions, where overwhelming factors force your opinions upon you. His emphasis
is more upon the unthinking acceptance of all social paradigms.
The tendency of Twain to speak out against injustice can be seen in its embryonic form in previous works when he criticized
aristocracy and slavery. Aristocracy has been criticized by Twain in most of his earlier works. In The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, Twain associated royalty with the two most immoral rapscallions in the novel, the Duke of Bilgewater and King Looy the
Seventeenth. The very names of these two characters poke fun at royalty. The rancid image provoked by "Bilgewater" and the
uneducated or, at least un-royal pronunciation of "Looy" are simply superficial images which Twain uses to deride aristocracy.
The Duke and King, however, continue to degrade their royal status by their underhanded, immoral behavior. Huck comes out
and assaults aristocracy and royalty directly with his discussion with Jim about royalty. He describes the evils of "Henry
the Eight" with particular vehemence. Through Huck, Twain criticizes monarchy and aristocracy as asinine and immoral: "[A]ll
kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out" (Twain[12] 199). The idiotic warring between the aristocratic Grangerfords
and Shepherdsons, the violence and ignorance of King Arthur's court in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and King
Arthur's scorn for common citizens of his country shows Twain's trend to expose the evils of aristocracy at every available
opportunity. Twain's purpose in doing so is an integrity issue. Twain feels the obligation to point out what he perceives
as wrong or unjust even in his less political works.
Book after book after short story was received coldly by American critics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, "A True Story,"
etc. Finally, by the publication of The Prince and the Pauper in 1881, major literary critics began to take notice of what
Howells called "that unappreciated serious side of Clemens' curious genius" . Slowly, a critical appreciation of Mark Twain
as more than a humorist began to take hold. He failed again in critics' eyes with Huckleberry Finn in 1885, but by the 1890's,
Twain was being taken as a serious writer. Twain's subject matter matured over time, which is what eventually forced the literary
critics to accept him as more than a humorist. Against the opinions of all but a handful of critics, Twain exited the realm
of pure humor, advancing to increasingly blatant social criticism. This trend can be seen in the child-like innocence of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which matured into social commentary on aristocracy in The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and on slavery in Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. This trend
ultimately evolved into critical condemnations of human nature and human society and anti-imperialist propaganda, where Twain
wrote explicitly for the political purpose of exposing a social evil. Throughout this trend we see varying levels of social
understanding and social awareness, but always the same acute, critical Twain forcing the truth to show itself - again a product
of Twain's integrity.
Twain was no longer a humorist with a biting edge of criticism. He had now developed his satire and his social conscience,
and they worked together to compose some of the harshest criticisms of American society, politics and religion during his
lifetime. Shortly after his death, Twain was being placed with the literary likes of Irving, Swift and Carlyle, and even his
harshest critic, Van Wyck Brooks, admits that Twain had the ability to be "a Voltaire, a Swift, a Cervantes" (57).
Mark Twain was always a moralist, always a satirist. His contemporaries took time in learning to see the depth, satire,
and social criticism which he made use of from the beginning. From the start, however, Twain was adamant in his dedication
to telling the truth as he saw it. His conception of the truth might have changed over time, but the one constant in Twain
is his integrity. He always spoke out, he always satired, he always criticized - even though he knew he did not have all the
answers.
Twain is considered the greatest American author for one reason - he wrote about America and captured its essence. He did
this through his honesty and integrity. He wrote what is considered the greatest American novel - The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. Again, why is this novel considered so great, especially when it was received so reticently and critically? It is because
Twain shows us the real America. He shows us the beauty of childhood, the evil of slavery, the atrocity of America's acceptance
of slavery, the beauty of the Mississippi, the adventure of a rafting trip. As an honest observer, he shows us the excitement,
the pride, the shame, and the beauty of America. He does so with an unerring pen. The truth of his novel is not circumstance;
it is the direct result of Twain's dedication to honesty and his integrity as an author, as an observer of the American and
other cultures, and as a human being. This is what made and still makes Twain great. Although it is unlikely that Twain can
ever be successfully understood as capitalist or socialist, as liberal or conservative, as rich-man's cohort or poor-man's
friend, he can most certainly be understood as a man of integrity who attacked perceived injustice and hypocrisy with unabated
ferocity. It is through Twain's honesty and integrity that he can be understood as an author and as a human being
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