



Produced by David Widger




SKETCHES NEW AND OLD

by Mark Twain

Part 2.



ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS--[Written about 1865.]

"MORAL STATISTICIAN."--I don't want any of your statistics; I took your
whole batch and lit my pipe with it.  I hate your kind of people.  You
are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much
his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he
wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal
practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking
coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of
wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc.  And you are always figuring out how
many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of
wearing expansive hoops, etc., etc., etc.  You never see more than one
side of the question.  You are blind to the fact that most old men in
America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they
ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and
survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet
grow older and fatter all the time.  And you never by to find out how
much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking
in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would
save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost
in a lifetime your kind of people from not smoking.  Of course you can
save money by denying yourself all the little vicious enjoyments for
fifty years; but then what can you do with it?  What use can you put it
to?  Money can't save your infinitesimal soul.  All the use that money
can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life;
therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use
of accumulating cash?  It won't do for you say that you can use it to
better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in
supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who
have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you
stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and
hungry.  And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor
wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you;
and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in
the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give
the revenue officer: full statement of your income.  Now you know these
things yourself, don't you?  Very well, then what is the use of your
stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age?  What
is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you?  In
a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying
to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as you are
yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"?  Now I don't approve
of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a
particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so
I don't want to hear from you any more.  I think you are the very same
man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of
smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your
reprehensible fireproof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor
stove.


"YOUNG AUTHOR."--Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because
the phosphorus in it makes brain.  So far you are correct.  But I cannot
help you to