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Transcript of "Mr. Twain's" Testimony Public Hearing re: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Proposed Critical Habitat
for the California Red-legged Frog, Tuesday, September 26, 2000, Dublin, CA.
21 Our next speaker will be Samuel Clemens.
22 Mr. Clemens, if you would come forward, state
23 your name, spell it for the record.
24 MR. CLEMENS: I am not a steamboat. I am Sam
25 Clemens, S-a-m C-l-e-m-e-n-s, not currently affiliated,
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1 having been deceased since 1910.
2 MR. BIBB: Mr. Clemens, you need to speak into
3 the microphone.
4 MR. CLEMENS: I prefer not to have my back to
5 an audience because I am unable then to detect the
6 approach of projectiles, cabbages and whatnot. So I ask
7 your permission, sir.
8 MR. BIBB: Permission denied. You need to
9 speak into the microphone like everyone else,
10 Mr. Clemens.
11 MR. CLEMENS: Yes, sir.
12 I have been enjoying peace and tranquility
13 among the dead for some 90 years when the news
14 arrived -- yeah, we get the news -- that my old friend,
15 the California red-legged frog, was in dire distress, so
16 I vowed to rouse myself up and attend this here hearing.
17 Now, someone told me, "This is just an
18 amphibian; it's a dumb animal. Why you get up all upset
19 about it?"
20 I said, "Well, ain't that just like the vanity
21 and impertinence of man to call an animal dumb because
22 it is dumb to his dull perception."
23 Man is the only animal that is cruel; the only
24 one that inflicts pain just because he gets a pleasure
25 out of doing that.
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1 So I say that Homo sapiens might consider
2 itself lucky that heaven goes by favor and not by graft.
3 If ever heaven went by merit, the frog would go in, and
4 you all would stay out.
5 I have additional reasons for wishing to speak
6 in favor of my little friend, the red-legged frog,
7 because when I was in my earlier career as a steamboat
8 pilot on the Mississippi River, with a salary greater
9 than that of the Vice President of the United States of
10 America, and no board to pay, piloting the steamboat,
11 350-foot long, up and down the majestic Mississippi.
12 That career was terminated abruptly by the
13 so-called Civil War, the war of northern aggression. So
14 in 1861 I come west out to California seeking another
15 career. I tried 10 or 12 of them. They didn't suit me.
16 Then up in Calaveras County I wrote a story
17 about the notorious jumping frog of Calaveras County,
18 and that is what propelled me into what some have
19 described as a ridiculously brisk and hopefully brief
20 period of eminence as a writer of stories and a man of
21 income as an author.
22 I was told that a supervisor of the county of
23 Calaveras asked today the name of the frog that I made
24 famous. Her name was Daniel Webster, and I
25 say "her" because she was, and being immortal is, a
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1 female. A female of the species being invariably
2 stronger, bigger, leaping farther, much smarter, better
3 mannered, in all regards to be highly recommended.
4 The other frog, which remained nameless, her
5 name was Dollie Madison, not in the record, also, of
6 course, a female. And I had the privilege of speaking
7 recently with a female descendant of Daniel Webster
8 herself. And this -- she called herself a big mama
9 red-legged, explained to me that things were looking bad
10 for big mama.
11 We don't mind having our tadpoles eaten by trout,
12 we don't mind having the snakes eat us up and the
13 raccoons and -- and the great blue herons. If we quick
14 enough, and if we alert, we can dodge them, get along
15 with that okay, after all, we appreciate what is
16 nutritious.
17 We like flies, mosquitoes, worms are
18 nutritious, good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a
19 worm to a red-legged frog, as a frog to a snake, a snake
20 to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a world.
21 So we don't mind being part of that long chain
22 of excitement, but when our ponds start drying up or
23 getting poisoned or getting scraped right away, then we
24 don't have any place to live. So I --
25 She said, "Sam, could you do us a favor and ask
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1 mankind to do us a favor? Mankind is liable to
2 annihilate us just on purpose or just by accident.
3 Sometimes I wish Noah had missed the boat. Could you
4 ask him to do us a favor, maybe advise him."
5 Well, I recommended that advice is not always
6 conducive to the acquisition of an education, and that
7 what is needed, for example, if a man proposes to pick
8 up a cat by the tail and carry her across the town, and
9 you advise him not to do that, and he does not do it, he
10 will not learn nearly as much as he would if he did pick
11 up that cat by the tail and carry her across the town.
12 So I having ruled out advice, she thought
13 perhaps commercial morality would be the solution.
14 Well, the low level reached by commercial morality in
15 America is deplorable. There are humble, God-fearing
16 Christian men among us who will stoop to do a thing for
17 $1 million that they ought not to be willing to do for
18 less than 2 million.
19 So I believe here we are reduced to the truth.
20 The truth is mighty, and it will prevail. There is
21 nothing the matter with that, except that it ain't so.
22 Perhaps we can work out something by our reasoning.
23 Reason often makes mistakes; conscience never does.
24 We have now a chance to save that sweet little
25 red-legged frog from the brink, if we have room in our
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1 hearts and in our ponds for my favorite frog.
2 Thank you, sir.
3 MR. BIBB: Thank you, Mr. Clemens.
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