Mark Twain Speaking

38. Holmes Breakfast

134 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING (1879):75-76; "Mark Twain on Babies," unidentified clipping, MTP; "The Babies" in the following: Report of the Proceedings of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, at the Thirteenth Annual Meeting (1879):154-56; MTS(10):64-68; MTS(23):58-62; Eloquence (R), 1:218-21; Eloquence(T), 1:298-301. Great Eastern / The largest steamship of the day: length 692 feet, beam 83 feet, displacement 27,000 tons. Her maiden voyage from Britain to New York occurredJune 17-28,1860. Although a failure as a transatlantic carrier, she held first place for size until the launching of the Oceania in 1899.· 38 · The Atlantic Monthly, doing the handsome thing by famous contributors, honored Oliver Wendell Holmes with a seventieth birthday breakfast. At this affair, which began about noon, a distinguished company assembled: Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Warner, George William Curtis, Stedman, Francis Parkman, and others. Mark Twain was one ofthe number. Still smarting over what he considered his outrageous performance at the Whittier dinner in 1877, he regarded the breakfast as an opportunity to atone. He insisted on speaking not later than third on the program to avoid the embarrassment he believed might otherwise affect him and disturb an audience wondering what new gaucheries the unpredictable humorist would perpetrate. Speech Atlantic Monthly Breakfast, Seventieth Birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston, December 3,1879 I would have traveled a much greater distance than I have come to witness the paying ofhonors to Dr. Holmes; for my feeling toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. You never can receive letters enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 135 dim the memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave you. Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap. Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guest-Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was also the first great literary man I ever stole anything from-and that is how I came to write to him and he to me. When my first book was new, a friend of mine said to me, "The dedication is very neat." Yes, I said, I thought it was. My friend said, "I always admired it, even before I saw it in The Innocents Abroad." I naturally said, "What do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?" "Well, I saw it first some years ago as Doctor Holmes's dedication to his Songs in Many Keys." Ofcourse, my first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for burial, but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped into a book store, and he did prove it. I had really stolen that dedication, almost word for word. I could not imagine how this curious thing had happened; for I knew one thing-that a certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful ofbrains, and that this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's ideas. That is what a teaspoonful ofbrains will do for a man-and admirers had often told me that I had nearly a basketful-though they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket . However, I thought the thing out, and solved the mystery. Two years before, I had been laid up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and reread Doctor Holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled up with them to the brim. The dedication lay on the top, and handy, so, by and by, I unconsciously stole it. Perhaps I unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for many people have told me that my book was pretty poetical, in one way or another. Well, of course, I wrote Dr. Holmes and told him I hadn't meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way that it was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves. He stated a truth, and did it in such a pleasant...