登陆注册
37249200000011

第11章

I shall, not try to give chronological order to my recollections of him, but since I am just now with him in Hartford I will speak of him in association with the place. Once when I came on from Cambridge he followed me to my room to see that the water was not frozen in my bath, or something of the kind, for it was very cold weather, and then hospitably lingered. Not to lose time in banalities I began at once from the thread of thought in my mind. "I wonder why we hate the past so,"and he responded from the depths of his own consciousness, "It's so damned humiliating," which is what any man would say of his past if he were honest; but honest men are few when it comes to themselves. Clemens was one of the few, and the first of them among all the people I have known. I have known, I suppose, men as truthful, but not so promptly, so absolutely, so positively, so almost aggressively truthful. He could lie, of course, and did to save others from grief or harm; he was, not stupidly truthful; but his first impulse was to say out the thing and everything that was in him. To those who can understand it will not be contradictory of his sense of humiliation from the past, that he was not ashamed for anything he ever did to the point of wishing to hide it. He could be, and he was, bitterly sorry for his errors, which he had enough of in his life, but he was not ashamed in that mean way. What he had done he owned to, good, bad, or indifferent, and if it was bad he was rather amused than troubled as to the effect in your mind. He would not obtrude the fact upon you, but if it were in the way of personal history he would not dream of withholding it, far less of hiding it.

He was the readiest of men to allow an error if he were found in it. In one of our walks about Hartford, when he was in the first fine flush of his agnosticism, be declared that Christianity had done nothing to improve morals and conditions, and that the world under the highest pagan civilization was as well off as it was under the highest Christian influences. I happened to be fresh from the reading of Charles Loring Brace's 'Gesta Christi'; or, 'History of Humane Progress', and I could offer him abundant proofs that he was wrong. He did not like that evidently, but he instantly gave way, saying be had not known those things. Later be was more tolerant in his denials of Christianity, but just then he was feeling his ******* from it, and rejoicing in having broken what he felt to have been the shackles of belief worn so long.

He greatly admired Robert Ingersoll, whom he called an angelic orator, and regarded as an evangel of a new gospel--the gospel of free thought., He took the warmest interest in the newspaper controversy raging at the time as to the existence of a hell; when the noes carried the day, Isuppose that no enemy of perdition was more pleased. He still loved his old friend and pastor, Mr. Twichell, but he no longer went to hear him preach his sage and beautiful sermons, and was, I think, thereby the greater loser. Long before that I had asked him if he went regularly to church, and he groaned out: "Oh yes, I go. It 'most kills me, but I go,"and I did not need his telling me to understand that he went because his wife wished it. He did tell me, after they both ceased to go, that it had finally come to her saying, "Well, if you are to be lost, I want to be lost with you." He could accept that willingness for supreme sacrifice and exult in it because of the supreme truth as he saw it.

After they had both ceased to be formal Christians, she was still grieved by his denial of immortality, so grieved that he resolved upon one of those heroic lies, which for love's sake he held above even the truth, and he went to her, saying that he had been thinking the whole matter over, and now he was convinced that the soul did live after death. It was too late. Her keen vision pierced through his ruse, as it did when he brought the doctor who had diagnosticated her case as organic disease of the heart, and, after ****** him go over the facts of it again with her, made him declare it merely functional.

To make an end of these records as to Clemens's beliefs, so far as I knew them, I should say that he never went back to anything like faith in the Christian theology, or in the notion of life after death, or in a conscious divinity. It is best to be honest in this matter; he would have hated anything else, and I do not believe that the truth in it can hurt any one. At one period he argued that there must have been a cause, a conscious source of things; that the universe could not have come by chance. I have heard also that in his last hours or moments he said, or his dearest ones hoped he had said, something about meeting again. But the expression, of which they could not be certain, was of the vaguest, and it was perhaps addressed to their tenderness out of his tenderness.

All his expressions to me were of a courageous, renunciation of any hope of living again, or elsewhere seeing those he had lost. He suffered terribly in their loss, and he was not fool enough to try ignoring his grief. He knew that for this there were but two medicines; that it would wear itself out with the years, and that meanwhile there was nothing for it but those respites in which the mourner forgets himself in slumber.

I remember that in a black hour of my own when I was called down to see him, as he thought from sleep, he said with an infinite, an exquisite compassion, "Oh, did I wake you, did I wake, you?" Nothing more, but the look, the voice, were everything; and while I live they cannot pass from my sense.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 天行

    天行

    号称“北辰骑神”的天才玩家以自创的“牧马冲锋流”战术击败了国服第一弓手北冥雪,被誉为天纵战榜第一骑士的他,却受到小人排挤,最终离开了效力已久的银狐俱乐部。是沉沦,还是再次崛起?恰逢其时,月恒集团第四款游戏“天行”正式上线,虚拟世界再起风云!
  • 天行

    天行

    号称“北辰骑神”的天才玩家以自创的“牧马冲锋流”战术击败了国服第一弓手北冥雪,被誉为天纵战榜第一骑士的他,却受到小人排挤,最终离开了效力已久的银狐俱乐部。是沉沦,还是再次崛起?恰逢其时,月恒集团第四款游戏“天行”正式上线,虚拟世界再起风云!
  • 一书啊

    一书啊

    人家穿书改剧情撩男神,凭啥她安阳芩穿书就成了撩男神男神跑,改剧情反被剧情改?
  • 破元天

    破元天

    异世重生,天生缺陷,本想普普通通过一生,却在无意间知晓了远古的秘密。为探寻真实的情况,走上了超脱天道的道路。
  • 追爱甜心:蜜宠小娇妻

    追爱甜心:蜜宠小娇妻

    一枚白金戒指,带她闯入他的黑白世界。她甘愿成为他的情人,真与假,只在她的心中……
  • 道祖临世

    道祖临世

    叶落心想,你一个千年老鬼懂个锤儿!自家闺女那是要成为仙人的存在,并且还是最厉害的那种!未来找的夫婿定然也不凡。自己这个做老丈人的肯定得准备几件能撑住场面的宝贝当嫁妆。只有这样,自家闺女在婆家才能硬腰杆,才能不受什么委屈。也是从此刻起,威震诸天万界——叶扒皮的名号才算是初显端倪。之后更是开启了左手蛇皮袋,右手砖的豪匪之路。即使是各大界主,一听说叶姓某人来了,立即便是封闭一界!娘的!还真没见过这么缺钱的主!连狗的铃铛都抢!(QQ群:1044929473)
  • 云小姐温良可人

    云小姐温良可人

    上一世,她被他强撸入府被迫成为他的小妾,她本欲藏拙扮丑安稳度日,却被他的宠妻诬陷她与下人私通,沦为惨死的下场。她一朝穿越而成为了现代云家又痴又傻又丑的三小姐身上,重活一世,没想到还是摆脱不了噩运,居然与他定有婚约。为了活命,她暗搓搓的搅拌着手里的帕子,每天绞尽脑汁想着怎么跟他解除婚约。只是后来画风突变:第一次退婚,他亲手给她剥橘子吃。第二次,他拿糖诱哄她。第三次,他送她一束桃花,撩她,人比花娇。n次后,某女抚额哀叹:果真棋逢对手。恍惚中,她不知不觉中已然入了他的坑。人人皆在看他笑话,直到后来她露出惊人的才华和绝世的容貌,吃瓜群众乖乖闭嘴了。他幽深一笑,她本就是他的掌中之宝。
  • 恋恋大学

    恋恋大学

    大学里,暗恋别人,被别人爱;跟同桌传纸条,因为一点小事闹别扭;帮同学写检查;被人欺负,又看着同寝人去欺负别人;去食堂勤工俭学,卖盒饭,帮别人打饭;去参加文学社团,发表文章……
  • 浮生一梦,桃之夭夭

    浮生一梦,桃之夭夭

    一个假冒的江湖术士,一个虚妄的人生断言,一个从天而降的无言,改变了这个小女孩一生的经历,真的只是命运的偶然,还是一个虚无又巨大的黑网?她本应该是娇滴滴的林家大小姐,却是能寄养在舅父家里,以为被亲生父亲抛弃才是命运的悲剧,其实锻炼才刚刚开始,到底从什么时候开始,自己成为了别人的一个棋子,或者说,她生下来就在这个棋局之上,既然不能逃之夭夭,那就跟命运抗争,让自己桃之夭夭,灼灼其华。
  • 英雄联盟之无限战争

    英雄联盟之无限战争

    林夕,带着强大的鬼神之力,穿越来到了瓦罗兰大陆。这里,有乖巧可爱的光辉女郎,有性感火辣的赏金猎人,有单纯无知的仙灵女巫,有纯美动人的琴瑟仙女,有暴力无比的曙光女神,有阴柔之美的皎月女神,有高贵无比的寒冰射手,有风骚无敌的九尾妖狐,有坚韧不屈的放逐之刃,有蛇蝎心肠的诡术妖姬。这里……咦?等等,我看到的怎么全都是美女?你以为这是一本描写后宫佳丽无敌种马的书?你错了,其实这是一本描写瓦罗兰战争时期那些人物宁死不屈,为了生存而苦苦挣扎的书。“也许……他们一开始是为了各自的利益而战斗,但后来,他们都为着各自的信念而战斗!为了,守护瓦罗兰,而战斗!”——弑神者?林夕!