"You got a mouse (etc.) in your pocket?"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> And was it really Mark Twain who came up with the version that
> permits kings, editors, and those with tapeworms to use the first
> person plural?  Or is that a case of generalized attribution?  (Sorry,
> Fred, I don't have a YBOQ handy.)

I'm also away from my YB(o)Q, but the earliest cites I can find are attributed
to New York Senator Roscoe Conkling:

---
1877 _Atlanta Daily Constitution_ 23 Oct. 2/4 Hayes speaking of the
administration uses the first person plural instead of the first person
singular -- we instead of I. Of this Conkling says, "Yes, I have noticed there
are three classes of people who always saw 'we' instead of 'I.' They are
emperors, editors, and men with a tape worm."
---

Variations of the tapeworm joke must have been floating around for quite a
while. "John Phoenix", the pen name of George Horatio Derby (1823-1861), wrote
this some time in the 1850s:

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a1860 _Phoenixiana, Vol. 2_ (1897) 9 I do not think I have a tapeworm; therefore
I have no claim whatever to call myself "we," and I shall by no means fall into
that editorial absurdity.
http://books.google.com/books?id=YsMsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA9
---

I don't see tapeworm quotes getting attributed to Twain until the '20s.

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1923 O.O. McIntyre, "How to Grow Thin---Eat!" _Atlanta Constitution_ 30 Sep. G21
Indeed I am so thin I have refused to use the editorial "we" in writing for fear
someone will write me venomously as they did Mark Twain: "What do you mean 'we;'
you and your tapeworm?"
---
1937 W.J.F., "The Lighter Side" _Hartford Courant_ 1 Jan. 18 It is supposed to
have been Mark Twain who explained that the plural pronoun meant the editor and
his tapeworm.
---

--Ben Zimmer

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