Mark Twain Speaking

4. Address to the Czar

18 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING desolating Time / The solemn words give the impression of a Rip Van Winkle returning home after a very long absence. When Mark Twain visited his family in Missouri in the spring of 1867, he had been away not quite six years. Pacific Railroad / Under construction at the time, the first transcontinental railroad was formed by the Union Pacific road extending its line west from Omaha, and the Central Pacific (later part of the Southern Pacific) moving east from Sacramento. They met at Promontory , Utah, in 1869.· 4 · When the Quaker City excursionists were invited to call upon the Czar of Russia, they appointed a committee to draft an address: T. D. Crocker, A. N. Sanford, Colonel Kinney, William Gibson, and Mark Twain, chairman. The chairman wrote the address, which was read by the American Consul for Odessa. Mark Twain said of his assignment, MTB, 1:333-34: "That job is over. Wriling addresses to emperors is not my strongsuit. However, ifit is not as good as it might be it doesn't signify---the other committeemen ought to have helped me write it; they had nothing to do, and I had my handsfull." Address to the Czar Yalta, Russia, August 25, 1867 Your Imperial Majesty: We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation, and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state, and therefore we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before your Majesty, save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a realm which, through good and evil report, has been the steadfast friend of the land we love so well. We could not presume to take a step like this, did we not know well that the words we speak here, and the sentiments wherewith they are freighted, are but the reflex of the thoughts and feelings of all our MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 19 countrymen, from the green hills of New England to the shores of the far Pacific. We are few in number, but we utter the voice of a nation ! One of the brightest pages that has graced the world's history since written history had birth, was recorded by your Majesty's hand when it loosed the bonds of twenty million serfs; and Americans can but esteem it a privilege to do honor to a ruler who has wrought so great a deed. The lesson that was taught us then, we have profited by, and are free in truth, today, even as we were before in name. America owes much to Russia-is indebted to her in many ways-and chiefly for her unwavering friendship in seasons of our greatest need. That that friendship may still be hers in times to come, we confidently pray; that she is and will be grateful to Russia and to her sovereign for it, we know full well; that she will ever forfeit it by any premeditated, unjust act, or unfair course, it were treason to believe. Text / Composite, based upon: TS, Notebook 18, August II-October 1867, MTP; "Address to the Czar," MTB, 1:333. ...