Click to add citation to My Citations.



[Monday, October 8, 1906]

Click to add citation to My Citations.

Item from Susy’s [Biography] about Sour Mash—

Mr. Clemens describes the [three] kittens which he rented for the summer and will return to their home when he goes back to the city—Their characteristics likened to the characteristics of human beings—The ugliness of masculine attire.

Click to add citation to My Citations. [From Susy’s Biography.] Click to add citation to My Citations. Papa says [1885]that if the collera comes here he will take Sour Mash to the mountains.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

This remark about the cat is followed by [various entries, covering a month], in which Jean, [General Grant, the sculptor Gerhardt], [Mrs. Candace Wheeler, Miss Dora Wheeler], [Mr. Frank Stockton, Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge], and the [widow of General Custer] appear and drift in procession across the page, then vanish forever from the [Biography]; then Susy drops this remark in the wake of the vanished procession:

Click to add citation to My Citations. Sour Mash is a constant source of anxiety, care, and pleasure to papa.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

[begin page 248] I did, in truth, think a great deal of that old tortoise-shell harlot; but I haven’t a doubt that in order to impress Susy I was pretending agonies of solicitude which I didn’t honestly feel. Sour Mash never gave me any real anxiety; she was always able to take care of herself, and she was ostentatiously vain of the fact; vain of it to a degree which often made me ashamed of her, much as I [esteemed] her.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

Many persons would like to have the society of cats during the summer vacation in the country, but they deny themselves this pleasure because they think they must either take the cats along when they return to the city, where they would be a trouble and an [incumbrance], or leave them in the country, houseless and homeless. These people have no ingenuity, no invention, no [wisdom;] or it would occur to them to do as I do: [rent] cats by the month for the [summer,] and return them to their good homes at the end of it. Early last May I rented a kitten of a farmer’s wife, by the month; then I got a discount by taking three. They have been good company for about five months now, and are still kittens—at least they have not grown much, and to all intents and purposes are still kittens, and as full of romping energy and enthusiasm as they were in the beginning. This is remarkable. I am an expert in cats, but I have not seen a kitten keep its kittenhood nearly so long before.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

These are beautiful creatures—these triplets. Two of them wear the blackest and shiniest and [thickest] of sealskin vestments all over their bodies except the lower half of their faces and the terminations of their paws. The black masks reach down below the eyes, therefore when the eyes are closed they are not visible; the rest of the face, and the gloves and stockings, are snow white. These markings are just the same on both cats—so exactly the same that when you call one the other is likely to answer, because they cannot tell each other apart. Since the cats are precisely alike, and can’t be told [apart by any of us,] they do not need two names, so they have but one between them. We call both of them Sackcloth, and we call the gray one Ashes. I believe I have never seen such intelligent cats as these before. They are full of the nicest discriminations. When I read German aloud they weep; you can see the tears run down. It shows what pathos there is in the German tongue. I had not [noticed, before,] that all German is pathetic, no matter what the subject is nor how it is treated. It was these humble observers that brought the knowledge to me. I have tried all kinds of German on these cats; romance, poetry, philosophy, theology, market reports; and the result has always been the same—the cats sob, and let the tears run down, which shows that all German is pathetic. French is not a familiar tongue to me, and the pronunciation is difficult, and comes out of me [incumbered] with a Missouri accent; but the cats like it, and when I make impassioned speeches in that language they sit in a row and put up their paws, palm to palm, and [frantically] give thanks. Hardly any cats are affected by music, but these are; when I sing they go reverently away, showing how deeply they feel it. Sour Mash never cared for these things. She had many noble [and engaging] qualities, but at bottom she was not refined, and [cared] little or nothing for theology and the arts.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

It is a pity to say it, but these cats are not above the grade of human beings, for I know by certain signs that they are not sincere in their exhibitions of emotion, but exhibit them merely to show off and attract attention—conduct which is distinctly human, yet [begin page 249] with a difference: they do not know enough to conceal their desire to show off, but the grown human being does. What is ambition? It is only the desire to be conspicuous. The desire for fame is only the desire to be continuously conspicuous and attract attention and be talked about.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

These cats are like human beings in another way: when Ashes began to work his fictitious emotions, and show off, the other members of the firm followed suit, in order to be in the fashion. That is the way with human beings; they are afraid to be outside; whatever the fashion happens to be, they conform to it, whether it be a pleasant fashion or the reverse, they lacking the courage to ignore it and go their own way. All human beings would like to dress in loose and comfortable and highly colored and showy garments, and they had their desire until a century ago, when a king, or some other influential [ass], introduced [sombre] hues and discomfort and ugly designs into masculine clothing. The meek public [surrendered] to the outrage, and by consequence we are in that odious captivity [to-day], and are likely to remain in it for a long time to come.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

Fortunately the women were not included in the disaster, and so their graces and their beauty still have the enhancing help of delicate fabrics and varied and beautiful colors. Their clothing makes a great [opera-audience] an enchanting spectacle, a delight to the eye and the spirit, a Garden of Eden for charm and color. The men, clothed in [dismal] black, are scattered here and there and everywhere over the [Garden] like so many charred stumps, and they damage the [effect] but cannot annihilate it.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

In summer we poor creatures have a respite, and may clothe ourselves in white garments; loose, soft, and in some degree shapely; but in the winter—the [sombre] winter, the depressing winter, the cheerless winter, when white clothes and bright colors are especially needed to brighten our spirits and lift them up—we all conform to the prevailing [insanity] and go about in [dreary] black, each man doing it because the others do it, and not because he wants to. They are really no [sincerer] than Sackcloth and Ashes. At bottom the Sackcloths do not care to exhibit their emotions when I am performing before them, they only do it because Ashes started it.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

I would like to dress in a loose and flowing costume made all of silks and velvets, resplendent with all the stunning dyes of the rainbow, and so would every [sane] man I have ever known; but none of us dares to venture it. There is such a thing as carrying conspicuousness to the point of discomfort; and if I should appear on Fifth Avenue on a Sunday morning, at [church time], clothed as I would like to be clothed, the churches would [be] [vacant] and I should have all the congregations tagging after [me, to] look, and secretly envy, and publicly [scoff. It] is the way human beings are made; they are always keeping their real feelings shut up inside, and publicly exploiting their fictitious ones.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

Next after fine colors, I like plain white. One of my sorrows, when the summer ends, is that I must put off my cheery and comfortable white clothes and enter for the winter into the [depressing] captivity of the shapeless and [degrading] black ones. It is mid-October now, and the weather is growing cold up here in the New Hampshire hills, but it will not succeed in freezing me out of these white garments, for here the neighbors are few, and it is only of crowds that I am afraid. [I made a brave experiment, the other night, to see [begin page 250] how it would feel to shock a crowd with these unseasonable clothes, and also to see how long it might take the crowd to reconcile itself to them and stop looking astonished and outraged. On a stormy evening I made a talk before a full house, in the village, clothed like a ghost], and looking as [conspicuous, all solitary and alone on that platform,] as any ghost could have looked; and I found, to my gratification, that it took the house less than ten minutes to forget about the ghost and give its attention to the tidings I had brought.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

I am nearly seventy-one, and I recognize that my age has given me a good many privileges; valuable privileges; privileges which are not granted to younger persons. Little by little [I hope to get together courage enough to wear white clothes all through the winter], in New York. It will be a great satisfaction to me to show off in this way; and perhaps the largest of all the satisfactions will be the knowledge that every [scoffer, of my sex,] will secretly envy me and wish he dared to follow my lead.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

That mention that I have acquired new and great privileges by grace of my age, is not an uncalculated remark. When I passed the seventieth [milestone], ten months ago, I instantly realized that I had entered a new country and a new atmosphere. To all the public I was [become] recognizably old, undeniably old; and from that moment everybody assumed a new attitude toward me—the reverent attitude granted by custom to age—and straightway the stream of generous new privileges began to flow in upon me and refresh my life. Since [then] I have lived an ideal existence; and I now believe [what Choate [said] last March], and which at the time I [didn’t credit:] that the best of life begins at seventy; for then your work is [done;] you know that you have done your best, let the quality of the work be what it may; that you have earned your holiday—a holiday of peace and contentment—and that thenceforth, to the setting of your sun, nothing will break [it,] nothing interrupt it.