S. L. C.

A year later, Mark Twain did “come back again,” as an honorary life member, and was given a dinner of welcome by those who had signed the lines urging his return.

XLIV

Letters of 1905.  To Twichell, Mr. Duneka and others. 
Politics and humanity.  A summer at Dublin.  Mark Twain at 70

In 1884 Mark Twain had abandoned the Republican Party to vote for Cleveland.  He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his last day it was hard for him to see anything good in Republican policies or performance.  He was a personal friend of Thedore Roosevelt’s but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt the politician rarely found favor in his eyes.  With or without justification, most of the President’s political acts invited his caustic sarcasm and unsparing condemnation.  Another letter to Twichell of this time affords a fair example.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: 

Feb. 16, ’05.  Dear Joe,—­I knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the President if I could only find the words to define it with.  Here they are, to a hair—­from Leonard Jerome:  “For twenty years I have loved Roosevelt the man and hated Roosevelt the statesman and politician.”

It’s mighty good.  Every time, in 25 years, that I have met Roosevelt the man, a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the hand-grip; but whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman and politician, I find him destitute of morals and not respectworthy.  It is plain that where his political self and his party self are concerned he has nothing resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively indifferent to the restraints of duty and even unaware of them; ready to kick the Constitution into the back yard whenever it gets in the way; and whenever he smells a vote, not only willing but eager to buy it, give extravagant rates for it and pay the bill not out of his own pocket or the party’s, but out of the nation’s, by cold pillage.  As per Order 78 and the appropriation of the Indian trust funds.

But Roosevelt is excusable—­I recognize it and (ought to) concede it.  We are all insane, each in his own way, and with insanity goes irresponsibility.  Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman and politician, is insane and irresponsible.

Do not throw these enlightenments aside, but study them, let them raise you to higher planes and make you better.  You taught me in my callow days, let me pay back the debt now in my old age out of a thesaurus with wisdom smelted from the golden ores of experience. 
                         Ever yours for sweetness and light
          
                                                  mark.