MARK TWAIN AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 252, 30 August 1879, Page 2

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 who 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 upon him will be checkmated. Now, lam going to enter the field with an open record, lam going to open up in advance to all wickedness I have done, 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 it 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 with the heartless brutality that is characteristic of me, I ran him out of the front door in his nightshirt,at the point of a shot-gun, and caused him to bowl up a maple tree, where he 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. lam as inhuman now as I was in 1860, I candidly acknowledge that I ran away at the battle of Gettysburg, My frients have tried to smooth over this fact by asserting that I did so for the purpose of imitating Washington, who went into the wood at Valley Forge for the purpose of saying his prayers, It was a miserable subterfuge. I struck out in a straight line for Tropic Cancer because I was scared, I wanted to have my country saved, but I prefered to have somebody else save it. I entertain that preference yet. If the bubble reputation can bo obtained only at a cannons mouth I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded, my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war lias been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more than I take in. This seems to be Napoleonic in its grandeur.

, My financial views are of the most decided character, but they are not likely, perhaps, to increase my popularity with the advocates of inflation. Ido not insist upon the special supremacy of rag money or hard money, The great fundamental principle is to take any kind I can get. " I lie rumor that I buried a dead aunt under my grapevine is quite correct. The vine needed fertilizing, my aunt wanted to be buried, and I dedicated her to that purpose. Does that fit me for Presidency ? the constitution of our country does not say so. No other citizen was over considered unworthy of this office because he onrichencd his grapevines with his dead relatives. _ Why should I be selected as the first victim of an absurd prejudice ?

I 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, Cut up and properly tinned he be made useful to fatten the natives of the cannibal islands and to improve our export trade with that region, I shall recommend legislation upontho subject in my first message. My campaign cry will be: " Desiccate the poor working man stuff him into sausages," These are about the worst paits of my record. On them 1 come before the country. If your country. won't try 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."