Who Is Mark Twain? Read Online Free PDF Page B

copyrights. I was shocked, but it was not all shock. I was flattered as well as shocked; flattered to be formally taken notice of by a foreign government. It seemed to kind of introduce me into the family of nations; seemed—well, it seemed to sort of recognize me as one of the Friendly Powers—not on a large scale, of course—not like Russia and China and those, but on a—well, on a secondary scale—New Jersey. Not one of the Six Powers, you understand, but No. 7. Not an actual member of the Concert of Europe, but a kind of understudy, in case one of them should get sick. So, really there was more pleasure than shock about it. Consequently, so as to clinch that thing—so that they couldn’t get out of it, some time or other when there was a war breeding and I should want to come in and take a hand and help plan out the way to conduct it—I wrote over to the publisher not to make any protest; keep quiet, don’t say anything, just pay the bill. And he did. And so to this day, just by that neat little turn, I am still one of the Seven Powers—sleeping-partner in the firm—and in those European affairs I can give advice whenever I want to. I’ve done it often. I don’t get anything for it, and I don’t get any answer, and don’t want any. I only just want my advice followed—that’s all—and I can see by the Cretan business that they’ve been doing it.
    Yes, that part of that tax matter was all right, and flattering, but there was one feature of it that was less so—and that was, the class of industries under which the British Government had taxed my literary faculty. In England, everything is taxed in detail and named; and my publisher had advised me not to pay this tax because authors’ copyright is nowhere named in the tax lists—it isn’t mentioned at all. Still, I made him pay it, but I asked the British Government to tell me what head I came under. The Government sent me the vast printed document where every taxable thing under the sun was named, and most courteously explained that I was taxed under paragraph No. 14, section D. Now you will never believe it, but I give you my honor that this— this, which you see before you—was actually taxed as a Gas Works. If I have never spoken the truth before I have spoken it this time.
    Well, even I, hurt as I was, was able to see that there was a sort of diabolical humor about that situation; and so, as Harper’s Magazine wanted a squib about that time, I dug it out of that tax-bill. I put it in the form of a letter to the Queen of England—the rambling and garrulous letter of a pleasant and well-disposed and ignorant ass who had the idea that she conducted all the business of the Empire herself, and that the best way to get my literature taxed under some other head than Gas Works was to ask her to attend to it personally. It was a long letter, and I began by explaining why I came to her with the matter. I said “I do not know the people in the Inland Revenue Office, your majesty, and it is embarrassing to me to correspond with strangers; for I was raised in the country and have always lived there, the early part in Marion county, Missouri, before the War, and this part in Hartford county, Connecticut, near Bloomfield and about 8 miles this side of Farmington, though some call it 9, which it is impossible to be, for I have walked it many and many a time in considerably under 3 hours, and General Hawley says he has done it in 2¼, which is not likely; so it seemed best that I write your Majesty. It is true that I do not know your Majesty personally, but I have met the Lord Mayor, and if the rest of the Family are like him, it is but just that it should be named royal; and likewise plain that in a family matter like this I cannot better forward my case than to frankly carry it to the head of the family itself. I have also met the Prince of Wales once, in the fall of 1873, but it was not in any familiar way, but in a quite informal way,—being casual—and