The Pioche Weekly Record

MARK TWAIN AND THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

Mark Twain, at the celebration of the New England Society the other day, said:

I thank you cordially for these kind and well-deserved compliments paid me, and I shall ever strive to deserve them.

But let us come down to business. I now appear before you as a protestor. I have kept still for years and years—anybody knows that; but I want to ask: What do you want to celebrate your ancestors for? I admit that they were a hard lot. I refer more particularly to the Mayflower gang. My friend on the left here says that you are not celebrating the Pilgrim Fathers, but their landing at Plymouth Rock. I thought the first pretext was thin, but this one is thinner. The first one was gauze, tin-foil, tissue, but this one is gold leaf. What was there about the landing of the Pilgrims? They had been three or four months at sea; they were all played out and nearly starved; it was fearful cold and they were nearly frozen. Why shouldn't they land? If they hadn't landed there would have been some reason for a celebration. Now you try to make out that this simple proceeding was of enough importance to be celebrated with orgies like this. Why, a horse would have known enough to land! Therefore this festival is an inconsistency, and it shows just what an irascible, intractable tribe the New Englanders are. They never agree on anything but Boston. Those ancestors of yours must have been a mighty hard lot, for there is not a man in this room who will admit that he is better than his father or his grandfather. Such of you as have not been in the Penitentiary—if such there be—are all better than your fathers. You may talk about your ancestry as you please, but as for me I am a border ruffian, a Missourian by birth, with Connecticut as my adopted State. I have the morals of Missouri and the culture of Connecticut, and that's the combination that makes the perfect man. Where is my ancestor, the good Indian? Your ancestors skinned him alive and I am an orphan. Not a drop of my blood runs in his veins to-day, but I don't object to that. They skinned him alive. Ah! that's the thought that rankles. He was a sensitive Indian and his embarrassment before the world must have been very great. If he had been a bird he would have been considered dressed. As a man he was one of the most undressed men I ever saw. Later on your ancestors persecute another ancestor of mine, the Quaker. Your ancestors didn't want any interference with the freedom of worship in their own peculiar way. The first African brought into New England as a slave was an ancestor of mine. I am of mongrel origin. Now, listen to me. Why do you wish to perpetuate these societies? I want you to stop right here and disband. Begin by selling Plymouth Rock at auction. In the great wealth of rocks in New England this particular rock would bring perhaps thirty-five cents. If you don't sell it throw it open to the patent medicine man. Do something to make a start. On this table I see water and milk and even the deadly lemonade. You are on the downward path. In a few years you will surely reach cider. Pause while it is not too late. But still I have as high an opinion of you and your ancestry as I can under the circumstances. My grandfather used to say that it would be hard to improve on the good old Plymouth stock—unless the person were born in Missouri.