MARK TWAIN AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.

Kumara Times, Issue 1159, 16 June 1880, Page 3

MARK TWAIN AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.

This is the way in which Mark Twain once announced himself as a candidate for President:—

I have pretty much made up my mind to run for President. What the country wants is a candidate vvho cannot be injured by investigation of his past history, so that the enemies of the party will be unable to rake up anything against him that nobody ever heard of before. IF you know the worst about a candidate to begin with, every attempt to spring things on him will be checkmated. Now I am going to enter the field with an open record. I am going to own up in advance to all the wickedness I have clone, and if any Congressional Committee is disposed to prowl around my biography in the hope of discovering any dark and deadly deed that I have secreted) why—let him prowl. In the first place, I admit that I treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of 1850. He was old and inexpert in climbing trees, but \vith the heartless brutality that is characteristic of me I ran him out of the fiont door in his night-shirt at the point of a shot-gun, and caused him to bowl up a maple tree, where be remained all night, while I emptied shot into his legs. I did this because he snored. I will do it again if ever I have another grandfather. I am as inhuman now as I was in 1850. I candidly acknowledge that I ran away at the battle of Gettysburg. My frieuds hav'6 tried to smooth over this fact by asserting that I did so for the purpose of imitating Washington, who went into the woods at Valley Forge for the purpose of saying his prayers. It was a miserable subterfuge. I struck out in a straight line for the Tropic of Cancer because I was scared. I wanted to have my country saved, but I preferred to have somebody else save it. I entertain that preference yet. If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannnon is empty. If it is loaded, my immortal j and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went im This seems to me to be Napoleonic in its grandeur. My financial views arc of the most derided character, but they are not ' likely, perhaps, to increase my popularity with the advocates of inflation. I do not insist upon the special supremacy of rag money or hard money. The great fundamental principle of my life is to take any kind I can get. The rumor that I buried a dead aunt under my grape-vine was correct; The vine needed ferlili in«, my aunt had to be buried, and I dedicated her to that purpose. Docs that unfit mo, for the Presidency 1 ? The Constitution of our country dor-s not say so. No other citizen was ever considered unworthy of this office because he enriched his grape- , vines' with his dead relatives; "Why should I be selected as the first victim of an absurd prejudice. J admit also that I am not a friend

of the poor man. I regard the poor man, in his present condition, as so much wasted raw material. Gut up and properly canned, he might be made useful to fatten the natives of the cannibal islands and to improve out export trade with that region. I shall recommend legislation upon the subject in my first message. My campaign cry will be: :< .Desiccate the poor working men; stuff him into sausages." These are about the worst parts of my record. On them I come before the country. If my country don't want me, I will go back again- But I recommend myself as a safe man—a man who starts from the basis of total depravity and proposes to be fiendish to the last.