Mark Twain Speaking

113. Our City

MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 363 the Boxer / The Boxers were a Chinese secret society that took a prominent part in the uprising of 1900. The Chinese name, "gee ho chuan," meaning "righteousness, harmony, and fists," implied the athletic training necessary for membership. Mark Twain's defense of the patriotic Boxer, as well as his condemnation of the exploitation of China by foreign powers, expressed attitudes that were far ahead of the temper of the times. His views were not popular with the American public, which was being fed on Chinese atrocity stories.· 113 · Traditional ceremony accompanied the annual banquet of the St. Nicholas Society: the central chandelier festooned with orange streamers, the speakers' table spread with an orange cloth decorated with smilax, waiters dressed as court pages of the House of Orange, silver-lidded Holland beer mugs as souvenirs . Among the 300 banqueters were scions ofold Dutchfamilies and other well known men: Netherlands Minister Baron Gevers, Consul General J. Rutgers Planten, Philip Rhinelander, R. B. Roosevelt, A. Cortland Van Rensselaer,John W. Vrooman, Cornelius B. Zabriskie, Frederick A.Juilliard, Barrett Wendell, and William E. Dodge. Frederic de Peyster Foster, ·garbed in the sash and headgear ofhis office, presided. Mark Twain was so dilatory about getting there that a posse had to be dispatched in a cab to fetch him. Our City Sixty-sixth Annual Banquet, St. Nicholas Society, Delmonico's, New York, December 6,1900 These are prosperous days for me. Night before last, in a speech, Bishop Potter complimented me and thanked me for my contributions to theology, and tonight the Rev. Dr. Mackay has elected me to the ministry. I thank both these gentlemen for discovering things in me which I had long before discovered, but which I had begun to fear the world at large would never find out. 364 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING Returning to New York after an absence of nine years, I find much improvement in it-a great moral improvement. Some think it is because I have been away, but the more intelligent think that it is because I have come back. But we won't discuss that. Let's get down to the business end of this toast-our city. We take stock of a city like we take stock of a man. The clothes and appearance are the externals by which wejudge. We next take stock of the mind, the intellect. These are the internals. The sum of both is the man or the city. New York has a great many details of the external sort which impress and inform the foreigner. Among these are the skyscrapers , and they are new to him. He hasn't seen their like since the Tower of Babel. The foreigner is shocked by them. I am not. As seen by daylight these skyscrapers make the city look ugly. They are-well, too chimneyfied-like a mouth full ofsnags; like a cemetery with all monuments and no gravestones. But at night, seen from the river when the great walls of masonry are all a-sparkle, the city is fairy-like. It is more beautiful than any other city since the days of the Arabian Nights. We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go. When the disgruntled foreigner has exhausted his objections by day, let us float him down the river by night. Certainly the skyscraper has its advantages, and we don't need to apologize for it. Then we have elevators in them that elevate-not like the cigar boxes of Europe called "lifts." The European lift is always stopping to reflect between floors. That's well enough in a hearse horse, but not in an elevator. The American elevator acts like the man's patent purge-it worked. As the inventor said, "This purge doesn't waste any time fooling around; it attends strictly to business ." In Europe, when a man starts to the sixth floor on a lift he often photographs his family so he may recognize them when he gets back. Then look at our cable and trolley and elevated cars. They are the cleanest, simplest, most comfortable in the world, and all of them were created and conferred upon us by the New York hackman. He did it, and we ought always to be grateful to him for that service. We have a custom oferecting monuments to our benefactors. We owe him one as much as...