《竞选州长》通过“我”在参加一次竞选活动中所遭受到的种种骇人听闻的诬蔑和打击，淋漓尽致地暴露了西方资产阶级“自由竞选”的黑幕，愤怒地撕下了美国统治阶级所标榜的“自由”、“民主”的假面具，有力地揭露了资产阶级政党及其代表人物的卑劣行迹和丑恶灵魂。同时，《竞选州长》是一部独具艺术特色的作品，是介乎讽刺小品和短篇小说之间的特殊体裁。
竞选州长
马克·吐温
几个月以前，我被提名为独立党的纽约州州长候选人，与斯图阿特·伍德福先生和约翰·霍夫曼先生竞选。我总觉得我有一个显著的长处胜过这两位先生，那就是——声望还好。从报纸上很容易看出，即令他们曾经知道保持名誉的好处，那个时候也已经过去了。近几年来，他们显然对各式各样可耻的罪行都习以为常了。但是正当我还在赞美自己的长处，并暗自因此得意的时候，却有一股不愉快的浑浊潜流“搅浑”我那快乐心情的深处，那就是——不得不听到我的名字动辄被人家拿来与那些人相提并论地到处传播。我心里越来越烦乱。后来我就写信给我的祖母，报告这桩事情。她的信回得又快又干脆。她说：
你生平从来没有干过一桩可羞的事情——从来没有。你看看报纸吧——你看一看，要明白伍德福和霍夫曼这两位先生是一种什么人物，然后想一想你是否情愿把自己降到他们的水平，和他们公开竞选。
我也正是这么想呀！那天晚上我片刻也没有睡着。可是事已至此，我究竟无法撒手了。我已经完全卷入了漩涡，不得不继续这场斗争。早餐时，我无精打采地看着报纸，忽然发现下面这么一段，老实说，我从来没有那么吃惊过。
伪证罪——马克·吐温先生现在既然在大众面前当了州长候选人，他也许会赏个面子，说明一下他怎么会在一八六三年在交趾支那瓦卡瓦克被三十四个证人证明犯了伪证罪。那次做伪证的意图是要从一个贫苦的土著寡妇及其无依无靠的儿女手里夺取一块贫瘠的香蕉园，那是他们失去亲人之后的凄凉生活中唯一的依靠和唯一的生活来源。吐温先生应该把这桩事情交代清楚，才对得起他自己，才对得起他所要求投票支持他的那些广大人民。他是否会照办呢？
我觉得我简直诧异得要爆炸了，这样残酷无情的诬蔑！我一辈子连见也没有见过交趾支那！瓦卡瓦克我连听也没有听说过！至于香蕉园，我简直就不知道它和一只袋鼠有什么区别！我真不知道怎么办才好。我简直弄得神经错乱，不知所措。我只好把那一天混过去，根本就没有采取任何步骤。第二天早上，同一报纸上登着这么一条（别的什么也没有）：
耐人寻味——大家都会注意到，吐温先生对于那桩交趾支那的伪证案保持缄默，似有隐衷。
（附注——从此以后，在竞选运动期中，这个报纸一提到我，唯一的称呼就始终是“无耻的伪证制造者吐温”。）
其次是《新闻报》，上面登着这么一段：
敬请说明——新任州长竞选人可否将下述事实经过向本市若干迫切等待着给他投票的市民赐予说明，以释群疑？他在蒙大拿的时候，和他同住在一间小房子里的伙伴们时常遗失一些小小的贵重物品，后来这些东西通通在吐温先生身上或是他的“皮箱”（他用来包裹身边物品的报纸）里找到了。于是大家为了帮助他改过自新，就不得不对他进一番友谊的忠告，所以就给他浑身涂满柏油，粘上羽毛，让他吃“坐木杠”的苦头，然后就叫他永远离开他在这个工棚里所占的位子。这究竟是怎么回事，他可以说明一下吗？
世间还能有比这更居心险恶的事情吗？我是一辈子没有到过蒙大拿的。
（从此以后，这个报纸就照例把我叫做“蒙大拿的小偷吐温”。）
于是我渐渐对报纸有了戒心，一拿起来就觉得提心吊胆——很像一个人想睡觉的时候去揭开床毯，可是脑子里却担心那底下会有一条响尾蛇似的。有一天，我又看到这么一段：
谣言被揭穿了——根据五点区的迈克尔·欧弗兰纳根先生和水街的启特·柏恩斯先生及约翰·亚伦先生三人宣誓负责的证词，现已证明马克·吐温先生诬蔑我党德高望重的领袖约翰·霍夫曼已故的祖父，说他是因犯盗劫罪被处绞刑的。这种卑鄙的说法是一种下流的无端的谣言，连丝毫事实根据的踪影都没有。像这样毁谤九泉之下的死者并以谰言玷污他们的令名的无耻手段，竟被人用以博得政治上的成功，这实在叫正人君子看了寒心。我们想到这种卑鄙的谣言给死者清白的家属和亲友们必然带来的悲恸时，几乎激动得要把受了污蔑和侮辱的公众鼓动起来，采取断然行动，对诽谤者施行非法的报复。但是我们不这么办！还是让他去受到良心的谴责而苦痛吧。（不过公众如果让感情的冲动占了上风，在盲目的愤怒支配之下竟至对诽谤者加以人身的伤害，显而易见，陪审员是不能给这些激于义愤的人们定罪的，法院也不能对他们加以处罚。）
末尾那句巧妙的话居然大起作用，当天夜里就有一群“受了污蔑和侮辱的公众”从我的房子前面冲进来，把我吓得连忙从床上爬起来，由后门逃出去。那些人满腔义愤，来势汹汹，一进门就捣毁了家具和窗户，走的时候把能带走的财物都拿去了。但是我可以把手按在《圣经》上发誓，我从来没有诽谤过霍夫曼州长的祖父。不但如此，直到那一天为止，我还从来没有听说他，也从来没有提到过他。
（我要顺便说一声，从那以后，上面所引的那个报纸就把我称为“盗尸犯吐温”。）
其次一条引起了我的注意的新闻是这样说的：
好一个体面的候选人——马克·吐温先生原定于昨晚在独立党的群众大会上作一次中伤别人的演说，但是他不曾按时到场！他的医生打来了一个电报，说他被一辆狂奔的马车撞倒了，腿上两处受伤——伤者在床上躺着，非常苦痛，如此这般，还编了一大堆这类的谎话。独立党党员们极力要把这种卑鄙的托词信以为真，故意假装着不知道他们所提名为候选人的这个花天酒地的家伙之所以没有来的真正原因。昨晚上分明有人看见一个人醉得不成样子，一歪一倒地走进吐温先生住的旅馆。独立党党员们有不容推卸的义务，应该赶快证明这个醉鬼并非马克·吐温本人。我们终于把他们难住了！这件事情是不容避而不谈的。人民的呼声响雷似的要求回答，“那个人究竟是谁？”
当真把我的名字牵连到这个不名誉的嫌疑上面，一时实在令人难以置信，绝对难以置信。我已经整整三年没有尝过麦酒、啤酒、葡萄酒或是任何一种酒了。
（现在我说起当初看到自己在那个报纸的下一期上被人确信地加上“酒疯子吐温先生”的诨名，竟能毫不感到苦恼——虽然明知那个报纸会要坚持不变地继续这样称呼我，一直到底——这就足见当时的环境对我起了多大的作用。）
这时候匿名信逐渐成为我所收到的邮件中的重要部分，普通的方式是这样的：
被你从你的公馆门口一脚踢开的那个讨钱的老太婆现在怎么样了？
爱管闲事的人启
还有这样的：
你干的事情，有些是除了我一人而外谁也不知道的。你最好识相一点，快给鄙人拿出几块钱来，要不然就会有一位大爷对你不客气，在报纸上给你过不去。
随你猜敬启
大致的意思总是这样。如果需要的话，我可以继续举出许多例子，直到读者发腻为止。
不久，共和党的主要报纸又给我“判了罪”——大规模的贿赂行为；而民主党的权威报纸则将一桩大事渲染的讹诈案硬栽到我头上。
（就是这样，我又获得了两个称号：“肮脏的舞弊分子吐温”和“可恶的讹诈者吐温”。）
这时候舆论鼎沸，叫我“答复”对我提出的那一切可怕的控诉，以致我们党里的主笔和领袖们都说我如果再保持缄默，那就会使我在政治上垮台。好像是要使控诉更加显得有劲似的，就在第二天，有一家报纸上又登出了下面这么一段：
注意这个角色——独立党的候选人还在保持缄默。因为他根本不敢说话。一切对他的指控通通充分证实了，他自己那种等于招供的缄默态度已经一再承认了这些罪状，现在他是永远也不能翻供了。独立党党员们，请看你们这位候选人！请看这位声名狼藉的伪证犯！这位蒙大拿的小偷！这位盗尸犯！仔细看看你们这位酒疯症的化身！你们这个肮脏的舞弊分子！这个可恶的讹诈专家！睁开眼睛盯住他——把他仔细打量一番——然后再打定主意：像这么一个败类，他犯了滔天罪行，获得了一大串晦气的头衔而不敢张嘴否认任何一个，你们是否可以把你们的规规矩矩的选票投给他！
要想摆脱这种攻击，简直没有办法，所以在深感羞辱之余，我准备要“答复”那一大堆无稽的指控和那些下流而恶毒的谣言。可是我始终没完成这个工作，因为就在第二天早上，又有一个报纸登出一个新的恐怖事件，再度的恶意中伤，严厉地控诉我烧毁了一个疯人院，连里面所有的病人也给烧死了，为的是它妨碍了我的住宅的视线。这可使我陷入了恐慌的境地。然后又来了一个控诉，说我曾经为了夺取我的叔父的财产而把他毒死了，并提出紧急的要求，要挖开坟墓验尸。这简直把我吓得几乎要发疯。这一切还不够，又给我加了一个罪名，说我在弃婴收养所当所长的时候，曾经雇用了一些掉光了牙齿的老迈无能的亲戚担任烹饪的工作。我开始动摇了——动摇了。最后，党派相争的仇恨加到我身上的无耻的迫害终于很自然地发展到了一个高潮：九个刚学走路的小孩子，包括各种肤色，带着各种穷形尽相，被教唆着在一个公开的集会上闯到讲台上来，抱住我的腿，叫我爸爸？
我放弃了竞选。我偃旗息鼓，甘拜下风。我够不上纽约州州长竞选所需要的条件，于是我提出了退出竞选的声明；并且由于满怀懊恼，信末签署了这样的下款：
“你的忠实的朋友——从前是个正派人，可是现在成了伪证犯、小偷、盗尸犯、酒疯子、舞弊分子和讹诈专家的马克·吐温。”
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 "riling" the deeps of my happiness -- and that was, the 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 "the infamous perjurer Twain."]
Next came the "Gazette," with this:
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 "trunk" (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they 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 "Twain, the Montana Thief."]
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 "outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, 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 "Twain, the Body-Snatcher."]
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: "WHO WAS THAT MAN?
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 "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issue of that journal without a pang -- 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 "convicted" me of wholesale bribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case of blackmailing to me.
[In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain, the Filthy Corruptionist," and "Twain, the Loathsome Embracer."]
By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an "answer" to all the dreadful charges that were laid to me, that the editors and leaders of my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following appeared in one of the papers the very next day:
BEHOLD THE MAN! -- The Independent candidate still maintains Silence. Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been endorsed and re-endorsed by his own eloquent silence till at this day he stands forever convicted. Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous Perjurer! The Montana Thief! The Body-Snatcher! Contemplate your incarnate Delirium Tremens! Your Filthy Corruptionist! Your Loath some Embracer! Gaze upon him -- ponder him well -- and then say if you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his mouth in denial of any one of them!
There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep humiliation, I set about preparing to "answer" a mass of baseless charges and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its inmates because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw me into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened. This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food for the foundling hospital when I was warden. I was wavering -- wavering. And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness were taught to rush on to the platform at a public meeting and clasp me around the legs and call me PA!
I gave up. I hauled down my colors and surrendered. I was not equal to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the State of New York, and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of spirit signed it,
"Truly yours,
"Once a decent man, but now MARK TWAIN, I. P., M. T., B. S., D. T., F. C., and L. E."
