Page:McClure's Magazine v10 no3 to v11 no2.djvu/63

Rh finally sympathetically—yes, with even a distinct friendliness in his eye. When the youth had finished, the foreman said:

"All right, my boy. It is a queer notion, and rather unusual, I must say. Still, it's your own proposition, and if you are satisfied with it, shed your coat and be gin."

At the end of a week Clemens was back at the cabin, pretty well worn out, Jim said:

"Why, how you look! What have you been doing?"

"Screening sand, sorting ore, feeding batteries, cleaning up amalgam, charging the pans, firing the retorts—oh, everything."

"Is that so? Did they give you a situation?"

"Yes."

"No!"

"Yes."

"What mill?"

"The Morning Star."

"What a lie."

"It isn't. It's true. And I've arranged for you to take my place Monday. Steady situation as long as you like. And you'll get wages, too. I didn't."

The closing remark discloses the magic secret of Clemens's "system," and he has worked the scheme many times since. Compressed into a sentence, the gospel of the system is this: Almost any man will give you a situation if you are willing to work for nothing; the salary will follow presently; you have only to wait a little, and be patient.

This plan floated Clemens into journalism; then into book-making, and other diversions followed. After a while, candidates for places on the daily press and for admission to the magazines began to apply to him for help. This was in 1870. They wanted him to use his "influence." It was a pleasant phrase, "influence"—and debauched his honesty. He could not bring himself to come out and acknowledge that he hadn't any, so he did what all the new hands do: wrote notes of introduction and recommendation to editors, although he knew that the focus of an editor's literary judgment could not be altered by such futilities. His notes accomplished nothing, so he reformed and stopped writing them.

But the applications did not cease. Then the "system" tested eight years before, in the mines, suggested itself, and he thought he would try it on these people. His first patient was a young stranger out West. He was blazingly anxious to become a journalist, and believed he had the proper stuff in him for the vocation; but he said he had no friends and no influence, and all his efforts to get work on newspapers had failed. He asked only the most moderate wages, yet he was always promptly snubbed, and could get no editor to listen to him. Clemens thought out a sermon for that young fellow, and in substance it was to this effect:—

Your project is unfair. The physician, the clergyman, the lawyer, the teacher, the architect, the sculptor, the painter, the engineer, all spend years and money in fitting themselves for their several professions, and none of them expects to be paid a penny for his services until his long apprenticeship is finished and his competency established. It is the same with the humbler trades. If you should go, equipped with your splendid ignorance, to the carpenter or the tinner or the shoemaker, and ask for a situation and wages, you would frighten those people; they would take you for a lunatic. And you would take me for a lunatic, if I should suggest that you go to them with such a proposition. Then why should you have the effrontery to ask an editor for employment and wages when you have served no apprenticeship to the trade of writing ? And yet you are hardly to blame, for you have the rest of the world with you. It is a common superstition that a pen is a thing which

However, never mind the rest; you get the idea. It was probably a good enough sermon, but Mr. Clemens has the impression that he did not send it. He did send a note, however, and it was to this effect:

"If you will obey my instructions strictly, I will get you a situation on a daily newspaper. You may select the paper yourself; also the city and State."

This note made the receiver glad. It made his heart bound. You could see it in his answer. It was the first time he had run across a Simon-pure benefactor of the old school. He promised, on honor, and gratefully, that whatever the instructions might be, he would not swerve from them a hair's breadth. And he named the journal of his choice. He chose high, too, but that was a good sign. Mr. Clemens framed the instructions and sent them, although he had an idea that they might dis-