I.

APRIL 19, 1907.

CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XVI.

BY MARK TWAIN.

[_Dictated January 12th, 1905._] ... But I am used to having my
statements discounted. My mother began it before I was seven years old.
Yet all through my life my facts have had a substratum of truth, and
therefore they were not without preciousness. Any person who is familiar
with me knows how to strike my average, and therefore knows how to get
at the jewel of any fact of mine and dig it out of its blue-clay matrix.
My mother knew that art. When I was seven or eight, or ten, or twelve
years old--along there--a neighbor said to her,

"Do you ever believe anything that that boy says?"

My mother said,

"He is the well-spring of truth, but you can't bring up the whole well
with one bucket"--and she added, "I know his average, therefore he never
deceives me. I discount him thirty per cent. for embroidery, and what is
left is perfect and priceless truth, without a flaw in it anywhere."

Now to make a jump of forty years, without breaking the connection: that
word "embroidery" was used again in my presence and concerning me, when
I was fifty years old, one night at Rev. Frank Goodwin's house in
Hartford, at a meeting of the Monday Evening Club. The Monday Evening
Club still exists. It was founded about forty-five years ago by that
theological giant, Rev. Dr. Bushnell, and some comrades of his, men of
large intellectual calibre and more or less distinction, local or
national. I was admitted to membership in it in the fall of 1871 and was
an active member thenceforth until I left Hartford in the summer of
1891. The membership was restricted, in those days, to eighteen--
possibly twenty. The meetings began about the 1st of October and were
held in the private houses of the members every fortnight thereafter
throughout the cold months until the 1st of May. Usually there were a
dozen members present--sometimes as many as fifteen. There was an essay
and a discussion. The essayists followed each other in alphabetical
order through the season. The essayist could choose his own subject and
talk twenty minutes on it, from MS. or orally, according to his
preference. Then the discussion followed, and each member present was
allowed ten minutes in which to express his views. The wives of these
people were always present. It was their privilege. It was also their
privilege to keep still; they were not allowed to throw any light upon
the discussion.