He said Fiske had no case, and therefore he did not wish to take it merely to lose it. Fiske insisted, and presently Hill said, “Well, here’s this young fellow here in my office. If he wants to take your case, all right; I will advise him and help him to the best of my ability without charge;” and he asked if Fiske was willing to put the case into Bacon’s hands. Fiske did it.

Then young Bacon had this happy idea. There being nothing for Fiske in the apparent conditions, he went to the University charter to see what he might find there. He found a very pleasant thing there; to use a phrase of the day, he struck oil in that charter. He brought the charter to Mr. Hill and showed him this large fact: that Cornell University was not privileged to accept or to acquire any property if, at the time, it already possessed property worth three millions of dollars. Cornell University possessed property worth more than that at the time that Mrs. Fiske made her will, and it still possessed that amount.

Hill said “Well, Bacon, the case is yours—that is to say, well, Bacon, the case is Fiske’s. It is the University, now, that has no show.”

Bacon won the case. It was his first case. He charged Fiske a hundred thousand dollars for his services. Fiske handed him the check, and his thanks therewith.

I didn’t see Bacon again for some years—I don’t know how many—and then he told me that that first lawsuit of his was also his last one; that that first fee of his was the only one he had ever received; that he had hardly pocketed that check until he ran across a most charming young widow possessed of a great fortune and he took them both in.

I think I will say nothing more about my great scheme for providing jobs for the unemployed. I think I have proven that it is a good and effective scheme.

Wednesday, April 11, 1906

Mr. Frank Fuller and his enthusiastic launching of Mr. Clemens’s first New York lecture—Results not in fortune but in fame—Leads to a lecture tour under direction of Redpath—Clipping in regard to Frank Fuller, and Mr. Clemens’s comments—Olive Logan clipping and Mr. Clemens’s comments—Mr. Clemens’s feeling toward suicides.

I am not glancing through my books to find out what I have said in them. I refrain from glancing through those books for two reasons; first—and this reason always comes first in every matter connected with my life—laziness. I am too lazy to examine the books. The other reason is—well, let it go. I had another reason, but it has slipped out of my mind while I was arranging the first one. I think it likely that in the book called “Roughing It” I have mentioned Frank Fuller. But I don’t know, and it isn’t any matter.

When Orion and I crossed the continent in the overland stage-coach, in the summer of 1861, we stopped two or three days in Great Salt Lake City. I do not remember who the Governor of Utah Territory was at that time, but I remember that he was absent—which is a common habit of Territorial Governors, who are nothing but politicians who go out to the outskirts of countries and suffer the privations there in order to build up States and come back as United States Senators. But the man who was acting in the Governor’s place was the Secretary of the Territory, Frank Fuller—called Governor, of course, just as Orion was in the great days when he got that accident-title through Governor Nye’s absences. Titles of honor and dignity once acquired in a democracy, even by accident and properly usable for only forty-eight hours, are as permanent here as eternity is in heaven. You can never take away those titles. Once a justice of the peace for a week, always “judge” afterward. Once a major of militia for a campaign on the Fourth of July, always a major. To be called colonel, purely by mistake and without intention, confers that dignity on a man for the rest of his life. We adore titles and heredities in our hearts, and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.

Well, Fuller was Acting Governor, and he gave us a very good time during those two or three days that we rested in Great Salt Lake City.