Mark Twain Speaking

2. Sandwich Islands Lecture

4 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING· 2 · The many versions ofthe Sandwich Islands lecture evolvedfrom Mark Twain's four months' visit to Hawaii in 1866 and his twenty-five letters from there published in the Sacramento Union. Continually varying his delivery, he used the Islands as a lecture topic more often than any other: almost one hundred times in the United States and England, usually announcing the title as "Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands." Sandwich Islands Lecture First Given in San Francisco, October 2, 1866; Intermittently Thereafter Until December 8,1873 Ladies and gentlemen: The next lecture in this course will be delivered this evening, by Samuel L. Clemens, a gentleman whose high character and unimpeachable integrity are only equalled by his comeliness of person and grace of manner. And I am the man! I was obliged to excuse the chairman from introducing me, because he never compliments anybody and I knew I could do it just as well. The Sandwich Islands will be the subject of my lecture-when I get to it-and I shall endeavor to tell the truth as nearly as a newspaper man can. If I embellish it with a little nonsense, that makes no difference; it won't mar the truth; it is only as the barnacle ornaments the oyster by sticking to it. That figure is original with me! I was born back from tidewater and don't know as the barnacle does stick to the oyster. Unfortunately, the first object I ever saw in the Sandwich Islands was a repulsive one. It was a case of Oriental leprosy, of so dreadful a nature that I have never been able to get it out of my mind since. I don't intend that it shall give a disagreeable complexion to this lecture at all, but inasmuch as it was the first thing I saw in those islands, it naturally suggested itself when I proposed to talk about the islands. It is a very hard matter to get a disagreeable object out ofone's memory. I discovered that a good while ago. When I made that funeral excursion in the Quaker City they showed me some very interesting objects in a cathedral, and I expected to recollect everyone of them-but I didn't. MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 5 I forgot everyone of them-except one-and that I remembered because it was unpleasant. It was a curious piece of ancient sculpture. They don't know where they got it nor how long they have had it. It is a stone figure of a man without any skin-a freshly skinned man showing every vein, artery and tissue. It was the heaviest thing, and yet there was something fascinating about it. It looked so natural; it looked as if it was in pain, and you know a freshly skinned man would naturally look that way. He would unless his attention was occupied with some other matter. It was a dreadful object, and I have been sorry many a time since that I ever saw that man. Sometimes I dream of him, sometimes he is standing by my bedpost, sometimes he is stretched between the sheets, touching me-the most uncomfortable bedfellow I ever had. I can't get rid of unpleasant recollections. Once when I ran away from school I was afraid to go home at night, so I crawled through a window and laid down on a lounge in my father's office. The moon shed a ghastly light in the room, and presently I descried a long, dark mysterious shape on the floor. I wanted to go and touch it-but I didn't-I restrained myself-I didn't do it. I had a good deal of presence of mind-tried to go to sleep-kept thinking of it. By and by when the moonlight fell upon it, I saw that it was a dead man lying there with his white face turned up in the moonlight. I never was so sick in all my life. I never wanted to take a walk so bad! I went away from there. I didn't hurry-simply went out of the window-and took the sash along with me. I didn't need the sash, but it was handier to take it than to leave it. I wasn't scared, but I was a good deal agitated. I have never forgotten that man. He had fallen dead in the street and they brought him...