Mark Twain Speaking

1. Presentation Speech

MARK TWAIN SPEAKING· 1 · To defend San Francisco against possible enemy attack during the Civil War, the War Department loaded the new monitor Camanche, in sections, aboard the Aquila, which sailed on a voyage around the Horn in May 1863. The day after the Aquila arrived in San Francisco in November, she sank at her pier. Efforts to raise her were unsuccessful until the Navy Department sent out a salvage crew headed by Captain IsraelJ. Merritt and including Major Edward C. Perry, a military engineer late ofthe Union Army. Rigging a cofferdam, they salvaged the dismantled Camanche, which was reassembled on shore and some months later launched with greatfanfare. The Aquila was also refloated. For his aid in achieving these feats, Major Perry was honored on the occasion at which Mark Twain delivered the speech below. For an informative account ofthe salvaging and attendant circumstances, see: Edgar M. Branch, "Major Perry and the Monitor Camanche: An Early Mark Twain Speech," American Literature 39, no. 2 (May 1967):170-79. Presentation Speech Maguire's Opera House, San Francisco, June 12, 1864 Major Perry: Permit me, sir, on the part of your countless friends, the noble sons of the forest-the Diggers, the Pi-Utes, the Washoes, the Shoshones, and the numberless and nameless tribes of aborigines that roam the deserts of the Great Basin to the eastward of the snowy mountains further north-to present you this costly and beautiful cane, reared under their own eyes, and fashioned by their own inspired hands. The red men whom I represent, although visibly black from the wear and tear of outdoor life, from contact with the impurities of the earth, and from the absence of soap and their natural indifference to water, admire the unblemished virtue and the spotless integrity which they find in you; albeit these dusty savages are arrayed in rabbit skins and their princely blood is food for the very vermin they cherish and protect, they still respect you, because your repugnance to graybacks--either in the way offood or society-and your antipathy to 2 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING the skins of wild beasts as raiment, is bold, undisguised and honest; finally, although these dingy warriors see no blood upon your hands, no human bones about your neck, no scalps suspended from your belt, they behold in you a brave whom they delight to honor-for they see you, in fancy, on the warpath in the three fights on the Bull's Run field; again in the historic seven-days' struggle before Richmond; and again sweeping down the lines with McClellan, in the fire and smoke and thunder of battle at Antietam, with a wound in your leg and blood in your eye! and they honor you as they would a High-you-muck-a-muck of many tribes, with crimson blankets and a hundred squaws. I am charged to say to you, that if you will visit the campoodies of the nomads of the desert, you shall fare sumptuously upon crickets and grasshoppers and the fat of the land; the skin of the wild coyote shall be your bed, and the daughters of the chiefs shall serve you. Receive the cane kindly--cherish it in memory of your savage friends in San Francisco, and bear in mind always the lesson it teaches: its head is formed ofa human hand clasping a fish-the hand will cling to the fish through good or evil fortune, until one or the other is destroyed. And the moral it teaches is this: When you undertake a thing, stick to it through storm and sunshine; never flinch-never yield an inch-never give up-hold your grip till you bust! You have been a citizen ofSan Francisco four months, Major Perry; you came to raise the Aquila, with Captain Merritt, and you did it, and did it well-she rides at anchor in the bay. You held your grip. The consciousness ofyour success will be halfyour reward-and the other half will be duly paid in greenbacks by the government. Your labors finished, you are now about to leave us tomorrow for your old home across the seas, and we are here to bid you God speed and a safe voyage. In the name of Winnemucca, War Chief of the Pi-Utes; SiouxSioux , Chief of the Washoes; Buckskin Joe, Chief of the Pitt Rivers; Buffalo Jim, Chief of the Bannocks; Washakee, Grand Chief of the Shoshones; and further, in the names of the lordly...