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 | Mark Twain's Speeches Ebook | |
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E-book Title: Mark Twain's Speeches
Author: Mark Twain
Book Description: INTRODUCTION
These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those
who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard
them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have
noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of
the author's words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author.
He was a most consummate actor, with this difference from other actors,
that he was the first to know the thoughts and invent the fancies to
which his voice and action gave the color of life. Representation is the
art of other actors; his art was creative as well as representative; it
was nothing at second hand.
I never heard Clemens speak when I thought he quite failed; some burst
or spurt redeemed him when he seemed flagging short of the goal, and,
whoever else was in the running, he came in ahead. His near-failures
were the error of a rare trust to the spontaneity in which other speakers
confide, or are believed to confide, when they are on their feet. He
knew that from the beginning of oratory the orator's spontaneity was for
the silence and solitude of the closet where he mused his words to an
imagined audience; that this was the use of orators from Demosthenes and
Cicero up and down. He studied every word and syllable, and memorized
them by a system of mnemonics peculiar to himself, consisting of an
arbitrary arrangement of things on a table--knives, forks, salt-cellars;
inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever was at hand--which stood for points
and clauses and climaxes, and were at once indelible diction and constant
suggestion. He studied every tone and every gesture, and he forecast the
result with the real audience from its result with that imagined
audience. Therefore, it was beautiful to see him and to hear him; he
rejoiced in the pleasure he gave and the blows of surprise which he
dealt; and because he had his end in mind, he knew when to stop.
I have been talking of his method and manner; the matter the reader has
here before him; and it is good matter, glad, honest, kind, just.
W. D. HOWELLS.
PREFACE
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION OF "MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES"
If I were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead of
sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals,
should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse me for making
him sick, I would say that he deserved to be made sick for not knowing
any better how to utilize the blessings this world affords. And if I
sell to the reader this volume of nonsense, and he, instead of seasoning
his graver reading with a chapter of it now and then, when his mind
demands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses himself with several chapters
of it at a single sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated, and he will
have nobody to blame but himself if he is. There is no more sin in
publishing an entire volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a
candy-store with no hardware in it. It lies wholly with the customer
whether he will injure himself by means of either, or will derive from
them the benefits which they will afford him if he uses their
possibilities judiciously.
Respectfully submitted,
THE AUTHOR.More... | |
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