The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain (good book recommendations .TXT) 📕

most uncompromising and most unlovely shade. At thirty-three, when I was comrading with him, his Presbyterianism was all gone and he had become a frank rationalist and pronounced unbeliever. After a few years news came to me in Hartford that he had had a sunstroke. By and by the news came that his brain was affected, as a result. After another considerable interval I heard, through Ned House, who had been visiting him, that he was no longer able to competently write either politics or poetry, and was living quite privately and teaching a daily Bible class of young people, and was interested in nothing else. His unbelief had passed away; his early Presbyterianism had taken its place.

This was true. Some time after this I telegraphed and asked him to meet me at the railway station. He came, and I had a few minutes’ talk with him⁠—this for the last time. The same sweet spirit of the earlier days looked out of his deep eyes. He was the same David I had known before⁠—great, and fine, and blemishless in character, a creature to adore.

Not long afterward he was crushed and burned up in a railway disaster, at night⁠—and I probably thought then, as I was thinking now, through the gay laughter-and-chatter fog of that dinner table: “What was he born for? What was the use of it?” These tiresome and monotonous repetitions of the human life⁠—where is their value? Susy asked that question when she was a little child. There was nobody then who could answer it; there is nobody yet.

When Mr. Langdon died, on the 6th of August, 1870, I found myself suddenly introduced into what was to me a quite new role⁠—that of business man, temporarily.

Friday, February 23, 1906

Mr. Clemens tells how he became a business man.

During the previous year or year and a half, Mr. Langdon had suffered some severe losses through a relative, an annex of the family by marriage, who had paved Memphis, Tennessee, with the wooden pavement so popular in that day. He had done this as Mr. Langdon’s agent. Well managed, the contract would have yielded a sufficient profit, but through mismanagement it had merely yielded a large loss. With Mr. Langdon alive, this loss was not a matter of consequence and could not cripple the business. But with Mr. Langdon’s brain and hand and credit and high character removed, it was another matter. He was a dealer in anthracite coal. He sold this coal over a stretch of country extending as far as Chicago, and he had important branches of his business in a number of cities. His agents were usually considerably in debt to him, and he was correspondingly in debt to the owners of the mines. His death left three young men in charge of the business⁠—young Charley Langdon, Theodore Crane, and Mr. Slee. He had recently made them partners in the business, by gift. But they were unknown. The business world knew J. Langdon, a name that was a power, but these three young men were ciphers without a unit. Slee turned out afterward to be a very able man and a most capable and persuasive negotiator, but at the time that I speak of his qualities were quite unknown. Mr. Langdon had trained him, and he was well equipped for his headship of the little firm. Theodore Crane was competent in his line⁠—that of head clerk and superintendent of the subordinate clerks. No better man could have been found for that place; but his capacities were limited to that position. He was good and upright and indestructibly honest and honorable, but he had neither desire nor ambition to be anything above chief clerk. He was much too timid for larger work or larger responsibilities. Young Charley was twenty-one, and not any older than his age⁠—that is to say, he was a boy.

A careful statement of Mr. Langdon’s affairs showed that the assets were worth eight hundred thousand dollars, and that against them was merely the ordinary obligations of the business. Bills aggregating perhaps three hundred thousand dollars⁠—possibly four hundred thousand⁠—would have to be paid; half in about a month, the other half in about two months. The collections to meet these obligations would come in further along. With Mr. Langdon alive, these debts could be no embarrassment. He could go to the bank in the town, or in New York, and borrow the money without any trouble, but these boys couldn’t do that. They could get one hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash, at once, but that was all. It was Mr. Langdon’s life insurance. It was paid promptly, but it could not go far⁠—that is it could not go far enough. It did not fall short much⁠—in fact, only fifty thousand dollars, but where to get the fifty thousand dollars was a puzzle. They wrote to Mr. Henry W. Sage, of Ithaca, an old and warm friend and former business partner of Mr. Langdon, and begged him to come to Elmira and give them advice and help. He replied that he would come. Then, to my consternation, the young firm appointed me to do the negotiating with him. It was like asking me to calculate an eclipse. I had no idea of how to begin nor what to say. But they brought the big balance sheet to the house and sat down with me in the library and explained, and explained, and explained, until at last I did get a fairly clear idea of what I must say to Mr. Sage.

When Mr. Sage came he and I went to the library to examine that balance sheet, and the firm waited and trembled in some other part of the house. When I got through explaining the situation to Mr. Sage I got struck by lightning again⁠—that is to say, he furnished me a fresh astonishment. He was a man with a straight mouth and a wonderfully firm jaw. He was the kind of man who puts his whole mind on a thing and keeps that kind of a mouth shut and