MARK TWAIN AS A CANDIDATE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1634, 15 September 1887, Page 3

MARK TWAIN AS A CANDIDATE.

To abuse a candidate has always been a practice to which the lowminded and ill-bred hare resorted. Mark Twain hit it off in one of his side-splitting squibs in a very amusing manner. Being desirous of entering public life, he became a candidate for the Governorship of New York. The papers that were opposing him came out one morning as follows:: “ perjury. “ Perhaps now that Mr Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 18S3, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor native widow and her helpless family of a meagre plantain-patch, their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation. Mr Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it 1” I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge. I never had seen CochinChina! I never had heard of Wakawak ! I didn’t know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo ! I did not know what to do. I was crazed and helpless. I let the day slip over without doing anything at all. The next morning the same paper had this — nothing more : “ SIGNIFICANT. “ Mr Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent about the Cochin-China perjury.” Mem.— During the rest of the campaign this paper never never referred to me in any other way than as “the infamous perjuror Twain.” But that flagrant falsehood was soon followed by an equally ingenious invention by another paper:— “ WANTED TO K' OW. “ Will the new candidate for Governor deißn to explain to certain of hts fallowcittzms (who are suffering to vote for him) the li'He circumstance of his cabinmates in Montana losing small valuables from time to liras until at last, these things having been invariably found on Mr Twain’s person or in his 1 trunk ’ (newspaper ho rolled his traps in), they fe’t compelled to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and foa hered him and rode him on a rail, and then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp J Will he do this.

Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that ? For 1 was never in Montana in my life. [After this this journal customarily spoke of me as “ Twain, the Montana Thief,”] “ THE ZiIE NAILED. “By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan, Etq., of the Five Points, and Mr Kit Burns and Mr John Allen, of Water Street, it is established that Mr Mark Twain’s vile statement (hat the lamented grandfather of our noble standard bearer, John T. Hoffman, was hanged for Irghway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of

foundation, in fact. It is diaheatening to virtuous men to see such shameful means resorted to to achieve politic’*! success as the attacking of the dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander. When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But no ! let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated conscience (though' if passion should get the better of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury couid convict and no court punish the perpetrators of (he deed).”

The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the “ outraged aud insulted public ” surged in the front way, breaking furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off auch property as they could carry when they went. And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered Governor Hoffman’s grandfather. More, I had never even heard of him or mentioned him np to that day and date.

I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always referred to me afterwards as “ Twain, the Body Snatcher.” “ A SWHEX CANDIDATE. “Mr Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the mass meeting of the independents last night, didn’t come to time ! A telegram from bio physician stated that be had been knocked downby a runaway team and his leg broken in two pluses, sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot of bosh of the same sort. And the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned creators whom they denominate their standard-bearer, A certain man was seen to reel into Mr Twain’s hotel last night in a state of beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We have them at last ! This is a care that admits of no shirking. The voice of the public demand in thunder tones, * Who was that man ? ’ ” It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment that it was really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine, or liquor of any kind. It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw myself confidently dubbed “ Mr Delirium Tremens Twain ” in the next issue of that journal without a pang — notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end. Shortly the principal Republican journal “ convicted ” me of wholesale bribery, and the leading Democratic paper “ nailed ” an aggravated case of blackmailing to me. [ln this way I acquired two additional names: “ Twain the Filthy Corruptionist,’’ and “ Twain the Loathsome Embracer.”] By this time there had grown to be each a clamour for an “ answer ” to all all the dreadful charge* that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative the following appeared in one of the papers the very next day:- “ BEHOLD THE MAN. “ The Independent candidate still maintains silence. Because be dare not speak. Erery accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been endorsed and re-endorsed by his own eloquent silence, till at this day he stands for ever convicted. Look upon your candidate, In lependente ! Look upon the Infamous Peijurer ! the Montana Thief! the Body Snatcher! Contemplate your Incarnate Delirium Tremens ! your Filthy Corruptionist! your Loathsome Embracer I Gaze upon him—ponderhim well—and then say if you can give your honest votes to » creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dare not open his mouth in denial of any one of them 1”