Famous Authors (Men). E. F. Harkins
not the pilot's a great and attractive post for a young man? "If you will take," says Mark, "the longest street in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in that street in the middle of an inky-black night, you will then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot's knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And then if you will go on until you know every street-crossing, the character, size and position of the crossing-stones, and the varying depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will have some idea of what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if you will take half of the signs on that long street and change their places once a month, and still manage to know their new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changes without making any mistakes, you will understand what is required of a pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi."
The life on the river, with its ever-changing dramatic and entertaining incidents, awoke the young man's sleeping imagination—gave him a strong desire to put to use the modest literary methods which he had acquired as an itinerant printer. Mr. Howells, too, it will be noticed, first had the passion for authorship aroused in him by the types and the presses.
The first sketches which Mr. Clemens sent to the local papers were signed "Iosh," a meaningless signature, which quickly made the young author desire something better. The improvement came to him when one day he heard a "big black negro" who was taking soundings call out "Mark twain!" which meant that there were two fathoms of water. The call struck the pilot's fancy, and he kept it in mind for future use.
Mr. Clemens served in the pilot-house—one of the best school-houses in the world, it may be said—until the war broke out. Then he ran blockades for a while, and for two weeks he carried a gun in the Confederate army, under General Harris. The two weeks' service cooled his ardor, and he went farther west with his brother Orion, who, as a sympathizer with the Union side, had received an appointment as Secretary of the Territory of Nevada. Samuel was to act as his brother's secretary, but as in this office he did nothing and earned nothing, he, after an attempt at prospecting, joined the staff of the Virginia City Enterprise. It was as the Enterprise's correspondent at the capital of the Territory, Carson City, that Mr. Clemens first used the striking pseudonym "Mark Twain." But he had no taste for routine work; or, rather, his manner of garnishing, often with his stinging satire, his routine work, did not suit the taste of the editor of the Enterprise, and at the end of six months Mark Twain stamped the dust of Nevada from his shoes and struck out for California, where he readily secured employment on the Union. In the spring of 1865 he took an interest with Bret Harte in a short-lived weekly called The Californian, and some of the humorous articles which he wrote for that publication were widely copied in the East. Later the Union sent him to the Hawaiian Islands to describe the sugar industry. His work as a correspondent was very successful, and so was the lecture tour which he made in California when he returned.
Major Pond, by the way, relates that Mark Twain committed his lecture to memory and was entirely confident of success; still, desiring to forestall even the possibility of failure, he arranged with some friend of his—Major Pond has forgotten her name—to sit in a box and start the applause if he should look in her direction and stroke his mustache. "Instead of failing, however," the Major reports, "the lecture started propitiously, and that caused Mark to forget his instructions to the lady. By and by, unconsciously, when the audience was filled to the neck with pleasure and sore with laughter, he unwittingly turned to the box where his friend sat and pulled his mustache. At the time he was saying nothing particularly good or funny, but the anxious lady took his action for the signal, and almost broke her fan on the edge of the box in a fury of applause." It took all the nerve which Mark had accumulated among the gamblers and crevasses of the Mississippi to pass through the embarrassment.
In 1867 Mr. Clemens published his first book, "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches," of which about four thousand copies were sold. That same year he went to Europe with the excursionists aboard the Quaker City.
This excursion proved to be the turning point in his career. He had a commission to write sketches of the journey for the Alta Californian. The sketches were duly published, and were then collected and offered to a publisher for marketing in book form. The material did not appeal to the publisher; it was startlingly uncut and undried. But Mark was insistent, and by and by the book appeared under the title of "Innocents Abroad." That book established Mark Twain's reputation as a humorist. During the thirty-three years which have intervened between that day and the present, Mark Twain's reputation has been maintained at a matchless height. No one has been deemed worthy by the reading public—which, after all, is the Supreme Court in literary matters—to be called his rival. And since the publication of "Innocents Abroad" Mark Twain's career has been public property, with no signs, no fences, not even a dog therein to bark at night.
Mark Twain's career stands unequalled in the literary history of America. He has been honored as an author and as a lecturer in almost every part of the world. He made a fortune and lost it; and now he is making another.
The literary historian must record in his case the prodigious achievement of an author remaining for at least thirty-three years—and who knows how many more will follow?—in almost steady demand in print and on the platform.
But in more than a literary sense was that excursion to Europe on the Quaker City the turning-point in Mark Twain's career, for it was on that memorable journey that he met Miss Olivia L. Langdon of Elmira, N. Y., who afterward became his wife; who is the subject of the most eloquent words which he ever penned, and who, if we are to believe their long-termed friend, Major Pond, "makes his works so great."
"LEW" WALLACE
Gen. "Lew" Wallace is the author of the most popular story ever written by an American. "Ben Hur" has been translated into every language which can boast of a literature. In the summer of 1900 it was estimated that nine hundred thousand copies of the book had been sold. It is safe to say that by this time the million mark has been reached. This literary phenomenon is enlarged by the fact that "Ben-Hur" has never appeared in a cheap, that is, a paper-covered, edition. The General has been urged repeatedly to authorize the publication of such an edition, but his refusal has been firm from the first. A friend of his who once heard the author repeat his refusal, exclaimed: "Good for you!" It is a question whether this friendly enthusiasm served any high purpose. If, as has often been reported, "Ben Hur" has converted many readers to Christianity, then its circulation might well be furthered in every way possible.
We mention this circumstance because of the half-sacred nature which, not simply in the minds of emotional readers but also in the mind of the stern-charactered author himself, the book has been gradually assuming. A few years ago General Wallace, while on a lecture tour among the big cities, related how "Ben Hur" was conceived and brought forth. He frankly admitted that prior to its conception, his religious views were unstable. But as the ideas took hold of him, as chapter followed chapter, as the central figure emerged under his pen from the mist of the early years in Bethlehem into the divine glow of the later years around Jerusalem, his own life underwent changes, until at length, when the work was done, he stepped forth a militant Christian for the first time in his life. We have heard many authors describe the manner in which their books were born, but Lew Wallace's description of the birth of "Ben Hur," for impressiveness and for entertainment, stands alone.
If the General had done nothing else but write the tale of Christ his fame would be certain of outlasting generations. But, as a matter of fact, the wonderful book represents only one of his many qualifications to sit among the Immortals, as we shall see presently.
The author was born in Brookville, Ind., on April 10, 1827. His father was David Wallace, who, after graduation from West Point and a two years' service in the army, adopted the profession of law and went to live in the little Indiana