The Autobiography of Mark Twain · Volume I · January 9, 1906 · New York, January 12, 1906 (2/2)

Joe Twichell sometimes took his turn. If he talked, it was easily perceptible that it was because he had something to say, and he was always able to say it well. But almost as a rule, he said nothing, and gave his ten minutes to the next man. And whenever he gave it to ⸻, he ran the risk of getting lynched on his way home by the rest of the membership. ⸻ was the dullest white man in Connecticut⁠—and he probably remains that to this day: I have not heard of any real competitor. ⸻ would moon along, and moon along, and moon along, using the most commonplace, the most dreary, the most degraded English, with never an idea in it by any chance. But he never gave his ten minutes to anybody. He always used it up to the last second. Then there was always a little gap⁠—had to be for the crowd to recover before the next man could begin. ⸻, when he would get entirely lost in his talk and didn’t know where he was in his idiotic philosophizings, would grasp at narrative, as the drowning man grasps at a straw. If a drowning man ever does that⁠—which I doubt. Then he would tell something in his experiences, thinking perhaps it had something to do with the question in hand. It generally hadn’t⁠—and this time he told about a long and arduous and fatiguing chase which he had had in the Maine woods on a hot summer’s day, after some kind of a wild animal that he wanted to kill, and how at last, chasing eagerly after this creature across a wide stream, he slipped and fell on the ice, and injured his leg⁠—whereupon a silence and confusion. ⸻ noticed that something was wrong, and then it occurred to him that there was a kind of discrepancy in hunting animals on the ice in summertime, so he switched off to theology. He always did that. He was a rabid Christian, and member of Joe Twichell’s church. Joe Twichell could get together the most impossible Christians that ever assembled in anybody’s congregation; and as a usual thing he couldn’t run his church systematically on account of new deacons who didn’t understand the business⁠—the recent deacons having joined their predecessors in the penitentiary down there at Wethersfield. ⸻ would wind up with some very pious remarks⁠—and in fact they all did that. Take the whole crowd⁠—the crowd that was almost always present⁠—and this remark applies to them. There was J. Hammond Trumbull, the most learned man in the United States. He knew everything⁠—everything in detail that had ever happened in this world, and a lot that was going to happen, and a lot that couldn’t ever possibly happen. He would close with some piety. Henry C. Robinson⁠—Governor Henry C. Robinson⁠—a brilliant man, a most polished and effective and eloquent speaker, an easy speaker, a speaker who had no difficulties to encounter in delivering himself⁠—always closed with some piety. A. C. Dunham, a man really great in his line⁠—that is to say the commercial line⁠—a great manufacturer, an enterprising man, a capitalist, a most competent and fascinating talker, a man who never opened his mouth without a stream of practical pearls flowing from it⁠—he always closed with some piety.