What Is Man? and Other Essays

d during Mark Twain’s Austrian residence. The news came to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a sum

and described and painted a thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say, in a voice broken with tears, ‘My God! the Empress is murdered,’ and fly toward h

e consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being draped with black. Vie

s, but did not offer it for publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the court circles a

B

ent, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and

nt in the earth when an empress was murdered, until now. Many a time during these seventeen centuries members of that family have been startled with the news of extraordinary events—the destruction of cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck of dynasties, the extinction of religio

reathing in the presence of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable or untraceable ancestor

emoter regions there was but little of it left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past; it was not properly news, it was history. But the world is enormous now, and prodigiously populated—that is one change; and another is the lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. “The Empress is murdered!” When those amazing words struck upon my ear in this Austrian village last Saturday, three hours after the disaster, I knew that it was already old news in London, Paris, Berlin, New Yor

without a single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent stone-cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive, empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat. And it was within the privileges and powers of this sarcasm upon the human race to reach up—up—up—and strike from its far summ

it can make him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide’s coffin. Love is a madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of despair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like Rudolph, throw away the crown of an empire and snuff out

p, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madness for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another’s pockets, scramble for one another’s crowns and estates, slaughter one another’s subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and village mayors, and little and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons. Anything to ge

with a crown upon her head or without it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justifica

were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest honors in the world’s gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She knew all rank

he gilded generals and admirals and governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside their other interests to talk about him. And wherever there was a man, at the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at some time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a secret satisfaction, and mentioned it—for it was a distinction, now! It brings human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite realizable—but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who can remember, now, that he once saw that creatur

in the air these days; I know it

ER: “He was

: “He was i

n my regiment. A brute

company. A troublesome scou

ow you. Why, every morning I used to—” etc., e

m, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there on the wall—he ma

hings, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful distinction. The interviewer, too; he tries to let on that he is not vain of his privilege of conta

hink. One may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any kind. When he saw his photograph and said, “I shall

dict will not be popular “above.” If the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without manifestly committ

w people were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black as a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were closed; in many windows were pictures of the Empress: as a beautiful young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady

o ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that a small black flag. But in its crypt lie several of the great dead of the House of Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon’s

oorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty, the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty, he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing apart and munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. Blazing uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping ruin of moldy rags, but he took no notice; he was not there to grieve for a nation’s dis

spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of color—intense red, gold, and white—which dimmed the brilliancies around them; and opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch of cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings. It was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two groups were the high no

prison that this splendid multitude was assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were e

ons—all in striking colors that add to the show. At three-ten a procession of priests passes along, with crucifix. Another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at

gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldi

, to widen the path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. Next, three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders

mptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk by eight black horses plumed with black bun

n Guard in their indescribably brilliant and picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited fr

iant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest litt

of shouting and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last Wednesday, when she entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls again; but everywhere was a deep stillness,

st coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his history draws a fine picture: I c

stately pa

ace I saw the

ot take m

vision, spiri

, sublime, and f

far lighted

of morning rends

dream of glor

in the Valley