AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH

The steamship St. Paul was to have been launched from Cramp’s shipyard in Philadelphia on March 25, 1895.  After the launching a luncheon was to nave been given, at which Mr. Clemens was to make a speech.  Just before the final word was given a reporter asked Mr. Clemens for a copy of his speech to be delivered at the luncheon.  To facilitate the work of the reporter he loaned him a typewritten copy of the speech.  It happened, however, that when the blocks were knocked away the big ship refused to budge, and no amount of labor could move her an inch.  She had stuck fast upon the ways.  As a result, the launching was postponed for a week or two; but in the mean time Mr. Clemens had gone to Europe.  Years after a reporter called on Mr. Clemens and submitted the manuscript of the speech, which was as follows: 

Day after to-morrow I sail for England in a ship of this line, the Paris.  It will be my fourteenth crossing in three years and a half.  Therefore, my presence here, as you see, is quite natural, quite commercial.  I am interested in ships.  They interest me more now than hotels do.  When a new ship is launched I feel a desire to go and see if she will be good quarters for me to live in, particularly if she belongs to this line, for it is by this line that I have done most of my ferrying.

People wonder why I go so much.  Well, I go partly for my health, partly to familiarize myself with the road.  I have gone over the same road so many times now that I know all the whales that belong along the route, and latterly it is an embarrassment to me to meet them, for they do not look glad to see me, but annoyed, and they seem to say:  “Here is this old derelict again.”

Earlier in life this would have pained me and made me ashamed, but I am older now, and when I am behaving myself, and doing right, I do not care for a whale’s opinion about me.  When we are young we generally estimate an opinion by the size of the person that holds it, but later we find that that is an uncertain rule, for we realize that there are times when a hornet’s opinion disturbs us more than an emperor’s.

I do not mean that I care nothing at all for a whale’s opinion, for that would be going to too great a length.  Of course, it is better to have the good opinion of a whale than his disapproval; but my position is that if you cannot have a whale’s good opinion, except at some sacrifice of principle or personal dignity, it is better to try to live without it.  That is my idea about whales.

Yes, I have gone over that same route so often that I know my way without a compass, just by the waves.  I know all the large waves and a good many of the small ones.  Also the sunsets.  I know every sunset and where it belongs just by its color.  Necessarily, then, I do not make the passage now for scenery.  That is all gone by.