PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

          Addressat the first annual dinner, N. E. Society,
          Philadelphia, December 22, 1881

          On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response,
          President Rollins said: 

“This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors.  He is not technically, therefore, of New England descent.  Under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself, however, he has done the best he could—­he has had all his children born there, and has made of himself a New England ancestor.  He is a self-made man.  More than this, and better even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of New England ascent.  To ascend there in any thing that’s reasonable is difficult; for—­confidentially, with the door shut—­we all know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent—­become a man of mark.”

I rise to protest.  I have kept still for years; but really I think there is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing.  What do you want to celebrate those people for?—­those ancestors of yours of 1620—­the Mayflower tribe, I mean.  What do you want to celebrate them for?  Your pardon:  the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not celebrating the Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth rock on the 22d of December.  So you are celebrating their landing.  Why, the other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever; the other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf.  Celebrating their lauding!  What was there remarkable about it, I would like to know?  What can you be thinking of?  Why, those Pilgrims had been at sea three or four months.  It was the very middle of winter:  it was as cold as death off Cape Cod there.  Why shouldn’t they come ashore?  If they hadn’t landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact:  It would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the world would not willingly let die.  If it had been you, gentlemen, you probably wouldn’t have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be celebrating, in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise, but only transmitted.  Why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the Pilgrims —­to be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstance—­a circumstance to be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like this for two hundred and sixty years—­hang it, a horse would have known enough to land; a horse—­Pardon again; the gentleman on my right assures me that it was not merely the landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrating,