In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and Iwent into the mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea.The idea was to advance me another step toward literature.For amusement I scribbled things for the Virginia City ENTERPRISE.One isn't a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and learning--unconsciously at first, consciously later--to discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a "style." One of my efforts attracted attention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me and put me on its staff.
And so I became a journalist--another link.By and by Circumstance and the Sacramento UNION sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six months, to write up sugar.I did it; and threw in a good deal of extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar.
But it was this extraneous matter that helped me to another link.
It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture.
Which I did.And profitably.I had long had a desire to travel and see the world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me upon the platform and furnished me the means.
So I joined the "Quaker City Excursion."
When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier--with the LAST link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: I was asked to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, and called it THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.Thus I became at last a member of the literary guild.That was forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever since.Leaving the Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can say with truth that the reason I am in the literary profession is because I had the measles when I was twelve years old.
III
Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them.Circumstance, working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled them all.I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was rejected--as a rule, uncourteously.I could never plan a thing and get it to come out the way I planned it.It came out some other way--some way I had not counted upon.
And so I do not admire the human being--as an intellectual marvel--as much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not know him personally.When I used to read that such and such a general did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it.Whereas it was not so.Circumstance did it by help of his temperament.The circumstances would have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too quick or too doubtful.Once General Grant was asked a question about a matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers; he answered the question without any hesitancy.
"General, who planned the the march through Georgia?" "The enemy!" He added that the enemy usually makes your plans for you.He meant that the enemy by neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see your chance and take advantage of it.
Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our temperaments.I see no great difference between a man and a watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man TRIES to plan things and the watch doesn't.The watch doesn't wind itself and doesn't regulate itself--these things are done exteriorly.Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him.Left to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable.Some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys.I am a Waterbury.A Waterbury of that kind, some say.
A nation is only an individual multiplied.It makes plans and Circumstances comes and upsets them--or enlarges them.Some patriots throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille.The PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and turns these modest riots into a revolution.
And there was poor Columbus.He elaborated a deep plan to find a new route to an old country.Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he found a new WORLD.And HE gets the credit of it to this day.He hadn't anything to do with it.