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244 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING· 72 · A. G. Spalding, president ofthe Chicago National Leaf5Ue Club,.financed the .first American baseball invasion ofthe Old World, a globe-circling tour oftwo teams, the All-Americans and the Chicagos,from October 1888 to April 1889. When they returned to New York, a banquetfeted promoter andplayersfor most ofa boisterous night. Theodore Roosevelt was there, Charles B. Dillingham, A. C. "Pop" Anson, F. D. Millet, De Wolf Hopper, and several hundred other buoyant gentlemen. "The dinner," said the New York Herald next day, "was served in nine innings, ofcourse, and the waiters had evidently been trained to make all the champagne bases. " Speakers were seated in positions corresponding to those of a baseball team: Chauncey Depew, pitcher; Judge Henry M. Howland, catcher; and soforth. Mark Twain, shortstop, was introduced as a native ofthe Sandwich Islands. The Grand Tour-I. The Sandwich Islands Baseball Dinner, Delmonico's, New York, April 8, 1889 Though not a native, as intimated by the chairman, I have visited, a great many years ago, the Sandwich Islands-that peaceful land, that beautiful land, that far-off home of profound repose, and soft indolence , and dreamy solitude, where life is one long slumberless Sabbath, the climate one long delicious summer day, and the good that die experience no change, for they but fall asleep in one heaven and wake up in another. And these boys have played baseballthere/-baseball , which is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century! One cannot realize it, the place and the fact are so incongruous; it's like interrupting a funeral with a circus. Why, there's no legitimate point of contact, no possible kinship, between baseball and the Sandwich Islands; baseball is all fact, the Islands all sentiment. In baseball you've got to do everythingjust right, or you don't get there; in the Islands you've got to do everything just wrong, oryou can't stay there. You do it wrong to get it right, for ifyou MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 245 do it right you get it wrong; there isn't any way to get it right but to do it wrong, and the wronger you do it the righter it is. The natives illustrate this every day. They never mount a horse from the larboard side, they always mount him from the starboard; on the other hand, they never milk a cow on the starboard side, they always milk her on the larboard; it's why you see so many short people there-they've got their heads kicked off. When they meet on the road, they don't turn out to the right, they turn out to the left. And so, from always doing everything wrong end first, that way, it makes them left-handed-Ieft-handed and cross-eyed; they are all so. When a child is born, the mother goes right along with her ordinary work, without losing half a day-it's the father that knocks off and goes to bed till he gets over the circumstances. And those natives don't trace descent through the male line, but through the female; they say they always know who a child's mother was. Well, that odd system is well enough there, because there a woman often has as many as six or seven husbands, all at the same time-and all properly married to her, and no blemish about the matter anywhere. Yet there is no fussing, no trouble. When a child is born the husbands all meet together in convention, in a perfectly orderly way, and elect the father. And the whole thing is perfectly fair; at least as fair as it would be anywhere. Of course you can't keep politics out-you couldn't do that in any country; and so, ifthree of the husbands are Republicans and four are Democrats, it don't make any difference how strong a Republican aspect the baby has got, that election is going Democratic every time. And in the matter ofthat election those poor people stand at the proud altitude ofthe very highest Christian civilization; for they know, as well as we, that all women are ignorant, and so they don't allow that mother to vote. In those Islands the cats haven't any tails, and the snakes haven't any teeth; and what is still more irregular, the man that loses...

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