竞选州长 中英文对照

竞选州长

中英文对照

2009-09-28

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RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR

By Mark Twain

A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great State of New York, to run against

Stewart L. Woodford and John T. Hoffman, on an independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had

one prominent advantage over these gentlemen, and that was, good character. It was easy to see by

the newspapers, that if ever they had known what it was to bear a good name, that time had gone

by. It was plain that in these latter years they had become familiar with all manner of shameful

crimes. But at the very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret, there

was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort

having to hear my name bandied about in familiar connection with those of such people. I grew

more and more disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came quick and

sharp. She said:

You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed of -- not one. Look at the

newspapers -- look at them and comprehend what sort of characters Woodford and Hoffman are,

and then see if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with

them.

It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night. But after all, I could not

recede. I was fully committed and must go on with the fight. As I was looking listlessly over the

papers at breakfast, I came across this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so confounded

before:

PERJURY. -- Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for

Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty- four

witnesses, in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury was to rob a poor

native widow and her helpless family of a meagre plantain patch, their only stay and support in

their bereavement and their desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people

whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?

I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge -- I never had seen

Cochin China! I never had beard of Wakawak! I didn't know a plantain patch from a kangaroo! I

did not know what to do. I was crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything

at all. The next morning the same paper had this -- nothing more:

SIGNIFICANT. -- Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent about the Cochin

China perjury.

[Mem. -- During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in any other way than

as

Next came the

WANTED TO KNOW. -- Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain to certain of

his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates

in Montana losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these things having been

invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his

felt compelled to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and feathered

him and rode him on a rail, and then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he

usually occupied in the camp. Will he do this?

Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was in Montana in my

life.

[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as

I got to pick up papers apprehensively -- much as one would lift a desired blanket which he had

some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. One day this met my eye:

THE LIE NAILED! -- By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan, Esq., of the Five Points,

and Mr. Kit Burns and Mr. John Allen, of Water street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's vile

statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble standard-bearer, John T. Hoffman, was

hanged for highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a single shadow of foundation

in fact. It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means resorted to achieve political

success as the attacking of the dead in their graves and defiling their honored names with slander.

When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and

friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary

and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But no -- let us leave him to the agony of a lacerating

conscience -- (though if passion should get the better of the public and in its blind fury they should

do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish

the perpetrators of the deed).

The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed with despatch that night,

and out at the back door, also, while the

breaking furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off such

property as they could carry when they went. And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say

that I never slandered Governor Hoffman's grandfather. More -- I had never even heard of him or

mentioned him, up to that day and date.

[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always referred to me afterward as

The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:

A SWEET CANDIDATE. -- Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the

mass meeting of the Independents last night, didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician

stated that he had been knocked down by a runaway team and his leg broken in two places --

sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And

the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge and pretend that they did not

know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate

their standard-bearer. A certain man was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in state of

beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute

was not Mark Twain himself: We have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The

voice of the people demands in thunder-tones:

It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was really my name that was

coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three long years had passed over my head since I had

tasted ale, beer, wine, or liquor of any kind.

[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw myself confidently

dubbed

notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the

very end.]

By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my mail matter. This

form was common:

How about that old woman you kicked of...

POL PRY.

And this:

There is things which you have done which is unbeknown to anybody but me. You better trot

out a few dollars to yours

truly or you'll hear thro' the papers from…

HANDY ANDY.

That is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was surfeited, if desirable.

Shortly the principal Republican journal

Democratic paper