Mark Twain Speaking

191. New York Postgraduate Medical School

MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 631 anyone who puts his foot across the line sets off an alarm that will be heard in Europe. The burglar who steps within this danger zone will set loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our elaborate system of defenses. As for the fate of the trespasser, do not seek to know that. He will never be heard of more. Now I will introduce the real president to you, a man whom you know already -Dr. Smith. Text / Composite, based upon: MTB, 4: 1472-73; "Books and Burglars ," MTS(10):213-14. Beard or Adams will give some land / Dan Beard and Theodore Adams were residents of the region. According to Paine, neither had been consulted before Mark Twain made his spur-of-the-moment suggestion about giving land. Adams responded by donating a site for the library.· 191 · At a dinner ofthe directors andfaculty ofthe New York Postgraduate Medical School and Hospital, Mark Twain, resplendent in white, was appropriately introduced as "Dr. Samuel L. Clemens." The chairman mentioned the Stormfield burglary. Dinner Speech New York Postgraduate Medical School and Hospital Dinner, Delmonico's, New York, January 20,1909 Gentlemen and doctors: This is the first opportunity I have had to thank the Post Graduate for the honorary membership conferred upon me two years ago; a distinction which is a real distinction, and which I prize as highly as anyone could. I am glad to be among my own kind tonight. I was once a sharpshooter, but now I practice a much higher and equally as deadly a profession. It wasn't so very long ago 632 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING that I became a member of your cult, and for the time I've been in the business my record is one that can't be scoffed at. As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people. I have always had a good deal to do with burglars-not officially, but through their attentions to me. I never suffered anything at the hands of a burglar. They have invaded my house time and time again. They never got anything. Then those people who burglarized our house in September-we got back the plated ware they took off, wejailed them, and I have been sorry ever since. They did us a great service-they scared off all the servants in the place. I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I am president, and the Post Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the country. This school in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives which otherwise would have been lost. When the distinction of an honorary membership in the Post Graduate College was conferred upon me, I felt it my duty to put aside other matters for a time and qualify myself for the position before beginning to practice. I have been practicing now for seven months. When I settled on my farm in Connecticut in June I found the community very thinly settled-and since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled still. This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression on my community. I suppose it is the same with all of you. I beg you to allow me to read a paper which I have prepared for your instruction-a very short one. I am only a country doctor, out on a farm in Connecticut, but I suppose you are similarly situated, around over the United States, out in the back settlements. The paper which I am now to read to you is entitled "On the Three Great Laws to be Observed in the Treatment of Bright's Disease of the Kidneys." First: The first great law to be observed when professionally approaching the patient whom an all-wise Providence has deemed it necessary to inflict with that always serious and often fatalYou know you can't carryon a great work competently without organization. So as soon as I had taken up my residence lastJune in the house I had built on the high hill overlooking the distant farms and the deep solitudes, I started a branch of the Post Graduate, and paid my alma mater the deserved compliment of naming it for her-"The Redding, Connecticut, Branch of the New York Post...