"
"Oh, miserable me! What is left for me?"
"What not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of Old Age."
THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES
From My Unpublished Autobiography
Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet,
faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature
of Mark Twain:
"Hartford, March 10, 1875.
"Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge
that fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using
the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter
with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I
would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had
made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters,
and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding
little joker."
A note was sent to Mr. Clemens asking him if the letter was genuine
and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that.
Mr. Clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter
from his unpublished autobiography:
1904. VILLA QUARTO, FLORENCE, JANUARY.
Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me,
but it goes very well, and is going to save time and "language"
--the kind of language that soothes vexation.
I have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography.
Between that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap
--more than thirty years! It is sort of lifetime.
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