Chapter II: Part 2

The Herr Von’s question having been delivered in no sotto voce style, everybody pricked up ears to hear Mark’s answer.

“I can’t explain in a few words,” he said, “but I’ll demonstrate.” And turning to Mr. Phelps: “Hand me the Doctor’s plate, please.”

The Doctor looked up “disgusted,” because he had only just commenced to eat and was “as hungry as a dog.” Plate in hand, Mark stepped to a space between the window and the table and asked the Doctor to join him, bringing his knife. “Now,” he said, “I will throw the plate up to the ceiling and you will catch it, on the end of your knife, but don’t you spill anything. After catching it, you will please keep it spinning upon the end of your steel for five minutes, balancing it so as not to lose a drop of sauce, a chop, or fried murphy. And when you have performed all these stunts without mishap, you will have gained a correct idea of what I think of the balance of European power.”

MARK AND THE IMPERIAL MISTRESS

At Vienna, in the late nineties, Clemens one fine day intoxicated himself with the idea that there would be millions in writing a play with Kathi Schratt, Emperor Francis Joseph’s acknowledged mistress, as heroine. He had in mind a collaborator among native playwrights, and the piece was to be translated into all living tongues. Mark actually started on the thing, adding to his knowledge of German as he went along. Matters having gone so far, I persuaded him to go and see Frau Schratt for local color.

“Bully,” he said. “But you must come along. I would never trust myself alone with a royal mistress, not I.”

Well, we went, saw, and--wondered at Francis Joseph’s taste. In speech and manner, though, the Schratt was a fine old girl. Showed us a big houseful of presents, all gifts from his Majesty, and elaborately so marked.

We had duly admired the silver bed, the silver folding stool and the ditto cabinet, likewise other chamber paraphernalia of white metal, when the Schratt said: “There is one thing more the like of which you haven’t in America.”

“You don’t say so!” ejaculated Mark, in blasphemous German.

The Schratt pushed a button, a wall panel shot sideways, and the handsomest silver-gilt bathtub ever came waltzing in, or rather roller-skated in.

In our homeward bound fiacre, Mark remained silent for fully ten minutes; then he delivered himself sadly but firmly:

“No, it’s all off with that mellerdrammer. For if I let Schratt ride down to the footlights in that golden tub, people will want to see the Empress in it, too; next they will holler for Kaiser Bill, Sarah Bernhardt, Loie Fuller, and William Jennings Bryan. It won’t work--people are such hogs!”

And the drama was never proceeded with.

MARK ON LYNCH LAW

They were talking lynch law in Professor Krafft-Ebing’s library in Vienna--some horrible nightmare that had come in the latest cable--and as a matter of course Clemens was asked his opinion as an American and observer of human nature.

“Lynch law means mob-lawlessness, doesn’t it?” he drawled. “Well, what does it argue? To my mind it argues that men in a crowd do not act as they would as individuals. In a crowd they don’t think for themselves, but become impregnated by the contagious sentiment uppermost in the minds of all who happen to be en masse. While in Paris last, the family and I toured all the places of horror, made odious during the White Terror--we followed pretty closely the scent of the ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ Michelet, Dumas, and others. I was particularly interested in the ‘Official Gazette’ of the guillotine, ‘The Moniteur,’ and my girls helped me read and digest many tell-tale pages yellow with age and tattered by usage. Among other interesting items, I found recorded that on a certain date the Nobles had voted to forego their feudal privileges.

“Now, their previous failure to renounce these same rights had been one of the prime causes of the Revolution. Yet when they acquiesced, they were put to the knife just the same, for mob-law ruled then. Another case in the ‘Moniteur’: I read of a deputy named Monge, the same whom Napoleon in his Saint Helena talks pronounced a most lovable character, so kind-hearted that he would never eat any fowl if he had to kill it first. Yet in the Convention, in the midst of the mob of his fellows, this same Monge vociferated for unlimited bloodshed, for ‘war to the knife.’ He had caught the contagion and, intoxicated with bloodthirstiness, acted the madman.

“‘I love my children,’ he cried, ‘but if the Convention decrees war on the enemies of the Republic, I will give my two daughters to the first two of our countrymen wounded in battle.’ Would he have said that seated quietly at his fireside? Certainly not. It was the mob that was talking through his mouth.”

THE TERROR

Mark returned to the subject on another occasion. He said:

“You know I have always been a great admirer of Dickens, and his ‘Tale of Two Cities’ I read at least every two years. Dickens witnessed my first holding hands with Livy when I took her to one of his lectures in New York. Now that I have finished ‘The Two Cities’ for the ’steenth time, I have come to this conclusion:

“Terror is an efficacious agent only when it doesn’t last. In the long run there is more terror in threats than in execution, for when you get used to terror your emotions get dulled. The incarnation of the White Terror, Robespierre, wasn’t awe-inspiring at all to the general public. Mention of his name did not send the children to bed, or make them crawl under the blankets. On the days when he made his great speeches, the galleries and the aisles of the Convention Hall were thronged with women, old and young--that does not look as if Robespierre had been an object of general fear or abomination--does it?”

RECOLLECTIONS OF KING CHARLES AND GRANT

“Now show me the place where that ancestor of mine had King Charlie beheaded.”

We had been sitting on some chairs which the great Napoleon had used in Saint Helena--the heaviest sort of mahogany, “and not a rat bite to be seen,” Mark pointed out, as we went exploring the Army Museum at Whitehall, London.

Agreeable to his demand, I took Mark by the arm and led him to a window looking out on the “Horse-Guards,” the famous old barracks, gazed at so much by American visitors.

“Outside of this window,” I explained, “the Commonwealth built a platform, and on this platform stood the block where Charles lost his silly bean.”

“Served the traitor right,” said Mark, “but that reminds me of----”

He thought a while, then repeated:

“Why it reminds me of (let’s see, we are in the second story, are we not?)--the grandstand in front of the Palmer House, Chicago, for that was also entered from the windows of the second story. I am speaking of the Chicago of 1879, welcoming General Grant after his triumphal journey around the world. What a sight the Windy City was, and what a grand sight he looked when he stepped upon the platform to review the Army of the Tennessee.”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “and I saw you on that very platform shake hands with Grant.”

But Mark Twain could not be tempted to go into his personal history when General Grant was being discussed.

“Did you ever see a city so magnificently and so patriotically bedecked?” he cried. “There was not a monument, palace, rookery, saloon or telegraph pole that was not gay with streamers and bunting, pictures, garlands, colored lanterns and placards of all sorts.”

“Yes there was,” said one of our friends.

Mark stretched out his hand and grabbed the speaker’s arm.

“No nonsense now.”

“I am as serious as you, and I say that the German Consul, with offices opposite the Court House, did not have a flag out on the day of Grant’s entry and reception.”

“Are you sure?” demanded Clemens.

“As sure as you are standing there. And I am proud to-day that I wrote up the story in the Chicago ‘Times’ and that Guy Magee, the city editor, headed it: ‘The German Son of a B----.’

“Well done. I could not have written a more accurate head myself.”

MARK MISSED GALLOWS-LAND

“Every time I went to Italy,” Mark Twain once said, “I felt like crossing over into Monaco.”

“To gamble?”

“Guess again, when billiards and solitaire are the only games I indulge in. Indeed, I am so ignorant, I would not know a roulette from another baby circus. I was and I am still crazy to go to Monaco to see a gallows, or, preferably, a hundred of them.” Mark eyed his audience curiously. After an impressive pause, he continued:

“Once upon a time, in the days of Louis XV and Mme. du Barry, there was a Prince of Monaco who was blessed with a very beautiful wife. Well, evil-minded people said of this prince that he smelled like a dead horse, and Madame the Princess simply could not endure defunct ‘gee-gee.’ So she decided that she had a perfect right to look for a soul-mate elsewhere, and be sure she got them by the score. Of course not in Monaco, as it is such a small country. She went to France, and particularly to Paris, for her amusements. And every time the Prince learned of a new lover worshipping at his wife’s shrine, he set up a gallows and hung the favored one in effigy with frightful ceremonies.

“The country, as remarked, being rather Lilliputian, his Highness had to go to the frontiers for his gallows planting, and as Madame the Princess was of a very changeable nature the principality, in the course of several years, became enclosed in a regular fence of gallows trees. When Paris heard of this, it laughed boisterously at the Prince’s strange humor and Madame the Princess’s latest lover swore that he would go to Monaco, rob the gallows of their manikins and carry them off to the future Champs Elysées for a marionette show.

“He tried--with a band of companions, but got pinched and was hanged by the neck in person, and not in effigy. Now, I wondered whether these gallows are still standing,” concluded Mark, “and if not, I wanted to find their habitat anyhow--make a map of gallows-land, so to speak.”

Too bad Mark missed writing a book on so promising a subject.

THINK OF HER SORROWS

He read to several friends in Vienna what he had written about the murdered Empress Elizabeth. “I know it is full of exaggeration,” he admitted. “I did gown her with virtues she never thought of possessing and I have denied all her frailties. As I learn now, she was just an ordinary woman, and her surpassing vanity was the only extraordinary thing about her. But think how much she suffered and think of the man she was married to. Re-read, too, that story about the murdered Rudolph. When Count Something approached her to break the news, she ran to him wringing her hands and cried: ‘My Rudy is dead. Oh, my Rudy!’ What told this Niobe among royal women that her son had been destroyed--killed in a low debauch? When I reflect how she maintained her self-respect in a life of constant disappointment and tragedy, I think I did well making her out a noble soul.”

BREAKING THE NEWS GENTLY

Returning to Vienna from a flying trip to Budapest, Mark was full of “a yarn that would illustrate like a circus and run for five years, every Sunday a page.” He said he heard the story at the archduke Joseph’s country place, the same Joseph who, towards the end of the war, tried to make himself King of Hungary and failed, but the probabilities are that the story was Mark’s own, with Magyar trimmings. It ran as follows:

A great landowner, after a business trip of several months, returned to Budapest, and was met at the station by his carriage and pair that was to take him to his estate in the country.

“Everything well at home?” he asked the coachman.

“Excellently well,” replied the driver, cracking his whip.

After a while the Baron ventured another question:

“Why didn’t you bring my dogs along?” he asked.

“Dogs are sick, your Excellency.”

“My dogs sick? How did that happen?”

“Ate too much fried horse.”

“Fried horse? Where did they get that?”

“Stable burned down.”

“My stable burned down, cattle and all? Awful! What about the castle?”

“Oh, the castle is all right.”

The Baron thought it over for the space of a mile, then said:

“You are sure the castle was not hurt by the fire?”

“Sure, only the two wings burned down.”

“But the family is safe?”

“Yes, the family is all right.”

When the horses entered upon their tenth mile, the Baron resumed his examination:

“Children all well?”

“All well and happy, except János and Maritzka, who were burned.”

“Burned, oh Lord! And the Baroness, my wife?”

“Oh, she is better off than any of us. God has her in His holy keeping. She was burned to death. Yes, indeed, she died with her mother and in her arms.”

“This is what I call breaking the news gently,” said Mark.

DUKES AND UNBORN CAR HORSES

I told Mark Twain of the Princes and Dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, “in meeting assembled” at London, who had protested against the expulsion of their kinsman, Dom Pedro, from the throne of Brazil.

“Just as efficacious as if the car horses that remain unbred since the arrival of the trolley sued the Brooklyn Rapid Transit, or the Third Avenue electric line, for murder,” snapped Mark.

“PA USED TO BE A TERRIBLE MAN”

With Mark’s daughter Susie, I was walking in the Berlin Thiergarten one afternoon when we encountered a very rough specimen of the genus tramp.

“Look at him,” said Susie. “You know, Pa, too, was an awful man before Mamma took him in hand and married him.” And with added seriousness, she continued: “He used to swear and swear, and then swear again, and the only thing that he didn’t do that was bad was to let cards and liquor alone--some kinds of liquor.”

It is too bad that I forget Mark’s comment on the above when I told him.

MARK ON THE BERLIN COPS

You know, of course, that Mark Twain at one time had a flat in Berlin and kept it going for a whole month. “I am tired of hotels,” he said, “and hereafter I am going to take my comfort in my apartment as Dr. Johnson took his in his inn.” After that he entertained the habitués of the embassy for a week or longer with stories of the beauties of home life, until we voted “Koernerstrasse Nr. 7 the jewel.”

But one fine evening I found a note from him at the Hotel de Rome, asking me to call at the Royal at 8:00. I met him in the lobby with several sympathizing friends, and he said:

“It’s all up with Koernerstrasse; too much police.”

“Did you have burglars, or the bailiffs, in?” was asked.

“Neither; just social calls from policemen--ten per day. The cops weren’t exactly unkind, but they annoyed me.”

“What did they do to you?”

“Asked questions.”

“Income queries?”

“Yes, of course, but I don’t mind lying about little things like that. On the contrary, making a clean breast of it, I confessed that I get a whole cent a word for every word I do, even for little words like ‘I’ or ‘Manafraidofhismotherinlaw.’ Did they believe me? Not they! They thought I was exaggerating.”

“What did they ask about next?”

“Craved information about Eliza and Marie. ‘Don’t know any such females,’ I growled severely.

“‘Mr. Clemens,’ bawled the policeman, ‘if you are trying to hoodwink the Royal Police of Berlin, there will be trouble. Confess now. You have an Eliza and a Marie and a Gretchen in this house.’

“‘Oh, you mean the maids,’ said I. ‘I don’t know anything about them. My Missus hires and bosses them. Ask the girls whether I am stringing you.’

“That evidently made no hit with the policeman, for he vociferated respectfully but sternly:

“‘It is your duty (according to paragraph this and that of the Civil Code) as head of the household (according to paragraph so and so of the Civil Code) to be informed whether or not these girls have been properly vaccinated.’

“His ‘head of the household’ made me laugh, but I managed to object: ‘How should I know?’

“‘Don’t you see them around with bare arms?’

“‘Maybe I do, but I never paid enough attention to say offhand whether they wear cuticle or fur.’

“‘And you didn’t notice vaccination marks on their arms?’

“‘Never. I can swear to that.’

“‘Then you _do_ know, that they are not vaccinated on their arms,’ said the policeman ever so insinuatingly. I’ll bet he read up the story of the serpent in Paradise.

“‘On the contrary, I _don’t_ know whether they are vaccinated on their arms or not,’ I answered truthfully. ‘Maybe they had themselves vaccinated _under_ their arms. I haven’t looked.’

“‘Some women,’ said the policeman, ‘are so vain that they get themselves vaccinated on their legs.’

“‘Possibly,’ I said, ‘but I have looked neither under their arms nor under their petticoats--I presume they have legs. However, I don’t know anything about them, for sure. And this being their day out, if you _must_ investigate, they will be back about ten o’clock, and, returning, you may look for yourself, if the law says so.’”

Mark indulged in one of his impressive pauses, then continued:

“That policeman did return and told the girls that he was authorized by me to look for their vaccination marks wherever located. Of course, it caused a row all around, the girls protesting that I was no gentleman. So, to end it all, I paid the rent for the whole year, eleven months’ rent, and left the flat.”

THE SAUSAGE ROOM

James R. Osgood, the former Boston publisher, later a member of the new firm of Osgood, McIlvain & Company in London, for whom I was doing the translation of Field Marshal Count Moltke’s works, had given me a set of Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth for Christmas, and when I went to see Mark Twain at the Royal in Berlin during his illness, I took the two small volumes along and offered to loan them to the sick man. He was as pleased as a three-year-old with a new toy.

“I always wanted to read these Memoirs,” he said. “She was a corker, that sister of the Great Frederick. I most heartily admire her. You know Howells did this translation while U. S. Consul in Italy and they say it is the best ever.” He dived into volume one and I left, to return next day. When he heard me talk in the vestibule to Mrs. Clemens, he hollered out:

“This way to the sausage room, where Her Royal Highness’ slave keeps.”

I went in.

“I am reading this book for the second time,” he said, “and it actually makes me forget that I am sick. I forget even coughing my soul out.”

Mrs. Clemens seemed to be annoyed about the “sausage,” but Clemens said that Heine had had the same sort of chamber when ill so long, and as the poet was quite contented “with his French Soucisson,” he must be with his “Frankfurter.” As a matter of fact, for its length, the room was extremely narrow.

“If it had legs, I would call it a _dachshund_,” suggested Mark, when Livy kept on grumbling.

I asked whether he had many visitors and he said:

“Yes, a few every day. As many as I can stand. But the women have all deserted me. There is a bunch of American girls in Berlin just now, but none find their way to the Royal. I am without a “_Mouche_” (French for fly)--I mean the human kind--the same as enlivened Heine’s dying days. What a girl that _Mouche_ was! I think she inspired some of his finest shorter poems. She was a real comfort to him, too. Maybe she was after advertising and liked to make Mathilda jealous. But, what of it? She made Heine laugh and Heine’s songs will make the world happier as long as it stands.”

While talking, he was groping in the air after flies and at last caught one. He held it in the hollow of his hand listening to its buzzing for a while, then asked me to take it in my own hand, never hurt it, open the window and let it fly out.

“I learned that from Tolstoy,” he said. “Tolstoy, you know, used to catch lots of mice in his house, but never killed them or gave them to the cat. He carried them out to the forest and there set them free. Why should a human being kill little animals? Because a tiger may want to eat me--that’s no reason why I should turn tiger, is it?”

He returned to the subject of the Margravine Wilhelmina.

“They thought I went to Bayreuth to hear Wagner,” he said. “Nothing of the kind. I like his Wedding March hugely and very little else he has done. But, while Livy and the kids went to pieces over Tristan und Isolde and The Nibelungen, I visited the grave of the Margravine and looked at the temples and grottoes and houses she built, the statues and fountains she set up, the beauty she lavished on the landscape! Ah, Wilhelmina would have been the woman for me--for a week or two, I mean, even as I would like to have been the Great Frederick’s dinner companion for a little while.”

MARK’S GLIMPSE OF SCHOPENHAUER

As Mark’s German was getting worse instead of better, and as his French was nowhere, he asked me to accompany him on his contemplated exploration of the Berlin Royal Library. I told the librarian about our great friend, about the interest he took in German affairs, and, in particular, I recalled that he had met the Kaiser at dinner. Of course the librarian turned himself inside out to be agreeable to both of us.

After showing us around a good deal, he gave us an alcove to work in, saying: “In this set of drawers you will find some most private papers of the royal family that are perhaps of public interest, but the public, please remember, must learn nothing of them. They are only to be seen by people of discretion, who value historical knowledge for history’s sake.”

Most of the books, pamphlets and manuscripts we found dated from the times of Frederick the Great and of course they were in French, since Frederick neither read nor wrote German intelligently. There was in particular a volume of verse by Voltaire addressed to Frederick, with original illustrations by some French artist, but the poetry was too grossly indecent to have interest for persons outside of a psychopathic ward.

I translated some of the verses to Mark, who said: “Too much is enough. I would blush to remember any of these stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna.”

I copied one verse for him, and as he put it in his pocket he said:

“Livy is so busy mispronouncing German these days she can’t even attempt to get at this.”

After some rummaging, Mark pulled out a manuscript that seemed to be of more recent date.

“German or Chinese laundry tickets?” he asked.

“It’s German,” I said, glancing at it.

There were about ten pages of copy, neatly written and headed “Mein Briefkasten” (My letterbox). On the line below was the title: “Tetragamy by Schopenhauer.”

Mark was at once interested.

“Schopenhauer, the arch-misogynist,” he mused, “let me see, physically he might have been the grandfather of queer Strindberg of the land where the matches come from. Ever read any of his books or dramas?” he asked, and before I could deny the implication, he was off talking again: “I have studied Strindberg’s womankind, hard-faced, sullen, cold-blooded, cheeky, grasping, vindictive, hell-raising, unvirtuous, unkind vixens, all of them--a dead give-away on the author’s part, for a writer who sees no good in women confesses that he was found out by the sex he wars on and that the female of the species pronounced him n. g. before he had time to out-Ibsen the Norwegian. If I ever turn over a new leaf and beat Livy, bet your life I will have naught but honeyed words and sweet metaphor for the ladies. This fellow Strindberg’s women are all compounds of vile ingredients--hideous hags with or without angel-faces--wife-beater Strindberg whipping dead mares. Well, to return to Schopenhauer (to me as incomprehensible as mutton) what’s this?” (pointing to the word Tetragamy), “Hebrew or merely Yiddish?”

“Literally it means marrying a fourth wife.” I examined the first page of the manuscript. “Seems to deal with conditions due to monogamy.”

“Good,” exclaimed Mark, “I have always wanted to reform monogamy, when my wife isn’t looking. Now let’s have the medicine straight.”

“But,” I said, “I can’t do this long MS. justice here. The librarian will come in presently and you heard what he told us.”

“Well,” said Mark, “you sit down and copy the German while I cover you with my broad back. Should the librarian intrude, I will knock on the floor.”

Accordingly, I copied those several pages, and afterwards made the translation Mark wanted.

But for several days Mark didn’t show up at his usual haunts, and even Mr. Phelps, the American Minister in Berlin, didn’t know what had become of him. The telephone was but sparingly used then in the legation offices. However, on the third or fourth day, Mr. Phelps learned that Mark was down with bronchitis at his hotel, the Royal, and that when he wasn’t sneezing or coughing, _ennui_ plagued him sadly.

“Well,” I said, “I have got something to liven him up,” and showed Mr. Phelps the manuscript. He advised me to send it at once to the Royal, but when I called on Mark Twain a week later and inquired _sotto voce_ whether he had received the manuscript, he said:

“Of course not. The wife got it and you know she won’t let me read anything but tracts. I suppose she burnt our MS.”

“Well,” I said, “I have got a carbon and I will let you have that by and by.”

“Not while I’m at home,” he said, “for now she is on the scent, she will watch out. She is dreadfully afraid that some one may corrupt me.”

Mark remained indoors for over a month, the thing was forgotten, and later, when he asked for the manuscript, I couldn’t find it. Other interests came up and Schopenhauer was shelved, though at the time we made the find, Mark speculated on getting a book out of it by amplifying it with other writings of the philosopher, particularly his “Fragments of Philosophy” and his “Pandectes et Spicilegia”; the latter are still in manuscript or, at least, were in manuscript in the early nineties.

If Mark were alive to-day, how happy he would be at the discovery I made quite recently in an old chest of drawers. I had seen a movie play, showing the extravagant amounts of money one can earn by selling old manuscripts--including the rejection slips--and I started cleaning up an old piece of furniture wanted for less ideal purposes. And there I found the long lost Schopenhauer MS. According to the notes, this manuscript belonged to a parcel of handwritten essays willed by the philosopher to the Royal Library at Berlin and dealing with themes and matters that Schopenhauer hoped to work out and improve upon by and by. But death overtook him before he could exploit the problem in hand. Here follows the MS. Mark was not allowed to see:

_Schopenhauer’s Tetragamy._

_The Philosopher’s Attempt to reform social conditions due to Monogamy._

Neither woman’s frailty nor man’s egoism should be held responsible for those frequent miscarriages of domestic happiness encountered in married life. Nature itself is to blame. If the state of monogamy, as some of the philosophers will have it, is the natural one, then nature disarranged its own scheme beforehand by making woman’s sexual life twenty or thirty or even forty years shorter than man’s.

At the present time males and females in the civilized world are about equal in number. This, too, is taken for proof that nature favored monogamy. It is a fact, on the other hand, observable in practical life as well as by medical investigation, that a woman is well able physically to be the wife of two men at the same time.

There are no healthier and more beautiful women, of their kind, than the Tedas of Asia who marry besides their chief-husband all his brothers, no matter how many he has got.

We do not go so far as to advocate polyandry. Polyandry is a condition based on a low state of civilization. But basing our proposition on physical grounds, we venture to assert that tetragamy, reorganized and protected by law, would be a married state doing away with most of the evils of monogamy from the man’s standpoint, while contributing to woman’s happiness.

We propose the introduction of a new form of marriage on the following lines. Instead of one man marrying one woman for better or worse, we propose that two men, friends of course, marry one woman, always a young and healthy person, with this understanding:

After the woman has reached a certain age, the two friends shall be at liberty to marry another young woman, but without divorcing or abandoning the first.

The second woman shall provide the men, if she lives, with a capable and loving mate for the rest of their lives.

Such a state of things would result in the happiness of two women, both would be taken care of for life and there would be no rivalry either.

As far as the men are concerned, tetragamy would do away with a passion leading to so many fatalities: jealousy.

Now let us look at tetragamy, as defined, from an economic standpoint.

At the present time, the average young couple enters into the marriage state when the man’s capacity as a provider is unequal to the demands of the average pleasure-loving woman. His meagre resources do not allow him to supply her with the luxuries she craves, nor has he as much money for himself as before marriage. It would be a waste of words to point out that these conditions are responsible for much unhappiness among married folks.

Take a case of poverty. Many a man who can hardly support himself tries to support a wife, and not only a wife, but children, numbers of them! What is the result? The woman, driven by want, for the love of her children, becomes a breadwinner on her own account. The time she ought to devote to her little ones, born or unborn, she spends in the factory, at the washboard or sewing machine.

Is that natural? If nature favored such a state of affairs, nature would be illogical, and who dare assert so monstrous a thing?

In the state of tetragamy, man has to bear but one-half of the household’s expenses. This gives him a chance to save money and to do something for his education, while the children, being supported by two men, have better clothes, better food, more love, and a better home.

Tetragamy would make for morality, because it would make it easier for men to get married. It would make for morality because woman, having two husbands, would not be longing for an affinity. And when old, she would not suffer from the thought, or from the actual knowledge, that her husband betrays her.

Things are different to-day. The man who marries young sees the fire of love extinguished in the woman at his side after a certain number of years.

As to the average woman, in the state of monogamy, she is only too often compelled to marry a man physically inferior to her. If she escapes that fate, then, in the course of time, she must needs come to the conclusion that she is too old for her husband.

But I am not unaware that there are serious objections.

As to the children, their identity would be determined by their looks.

As to possible differences--they will not be greater than in marriage as it is to-day. If people are inclined to fight, they will do so under any conditions, good, bad or indifferent. For my own part I am inclined to think that there will be less fighting, since jealousy will be eliminated beforehand.

What about financial affairs? There should be no communism, of course. Each man could contribute his share and the woman should be allowed free disposal of her savings.

Of course, the state must take the first woman under its protection. She can never be abandoned and can be divorced for cause only.

Under the sway of monogamy duties and nature are forever in conflict. Woman is tempted when young, is abandoned morally or physically or both when old.

If this be natural, then nature should be reformed and tetragamy substituted for monogamy.

“MURDERER” BLUCHER IN OXFORD

“Oxford, though you might not think so, has a traffic cop, the same as Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue,” said Mark in the Savoy Lounge across the teacups after the excitement over his triumph in the British University metropolis had cooled down a bit. “He is a smart guy--actually remembers Holmes’ visit and asked me about the old man. He spoke of him as ‘Ome’s, Sweet Ome’s.’ When you come to think of it, it’s a good name, after all.

“Among other interesting things, not connected with the University, was a public house sign I lit upon at a corner not far from our inn. It showed a great warrior on a fierce charger. ‘General Blucher’ was written across the bottom. It gave me quite a start when I learned that on this spot, in 1816 or 1817, Blucher hollered for a drink and got it when on his way to the University.”

“What did he want with the University?” I queried.

“He was crowned a doctor there after Waterloo.

“I tell you, that took me down a peg, or rather a whole row of pegs. Blucher a doctor like myself! I knew him as a foul-mouthed, cruel, pestiferous, and thieving scoundrel--occasionally lucky in the field. But now I wanted to know more about him and I have haunted the British Museum for additional facts. What do you think I learned? Blucher, who was dirty and slouchy by nature, dressed up on the eve of battle:--best tunic, fancy sword, gilt lace, feathered hat and what-not! And he had himself bathed, rouged and powdered, manicured and curry-combed.

“‘I feel like a girl going to her first ball,’ he used to say.

“And people like that, who delight in murder and rapine, receive honorary degrees!”

MARK’S HUMAN SIDE

Susan, Jean, and Clara Clemens, papa Mark, and myself were having lots of fun at the famous Salamonski Circus in Berlin--Mark and I laughing with the children when there was nothing else to interest us. There was a girl of 16 or 17 doing a stunt on a horse. Mark said: “The poor child looks as if she had never had a square meal in her life--isn’t that professional smile of hers too sad for words?” While she was doing a salto mortale, a clown ran in and dived between the horse’s legs. The horse got frightened and threw the rider. Of course, the children thought this part of the program, and laughed heartily. But the girl didn’t attempt to get up, and when the riding master tried to raise her, she cried and moaned, and one of her legs hung down lifeless, while the blood spurted through her white tights.

“Keep still, children,” said Mark. “Don’t you see the poor girl is hurt?”

A stretcher came and carried off the moaning girl and the performance proceeded as if nothing had happened. But though the children begged hard, Mark would not stay.

“Another time, not now,” he insisted.

Just then a gypsy-looking, elderly woman came running from behind the scenes, looking about wildly. When her eye located the clown, she rushed up to him and hit him a terrible blow in the face. “You have ruined my girl. She will never be able to ride again,” she cried.

“Served him right,” said Mark. “I do hope the manager gets a clout on the jaw, too. For he really is the responsible guy. The clown has to get laughs, the girl has to risk her limbs, so that the manager may coin money. What a world this is, what a world! And you and I, too! I never thought of kicking myself for laughing when that poor girl broke her leg--nor did you, I bet.”

AN AUSTRALIAN SURPRISE

At the time when Mark was living quietly at Ledworth Square, London, writing “Around the World,” we met a party of Australians at the Metropole one afternoon. It was after poor Susie’s death, and the heartbroken father hadn’t made anyone laugh for months. But those “Aussies kind of woke me up,” he admitted. “Jolly guys, out there at the Antipodes,” he said after the first round; “too bad I didn’t know that when I struck Sydney. As I prepared to step upon the platform there, I wondered, with some fear and trepidation, whether your people would take kindly to my brand of humor. If they refused to be tickled by my first lecture--God have mercy upon my creditors! Of course I had my story pat. Still, as I climbed those steps, I debated in my mind whether or not I had better substitute such or such a yarn for the opening lines planned. I had half decided to risk a change, when I faced the audience and--the pleasantest, the most overwhelming surprise of my life! I met a sea, a whole Atlantic, of guffawing heads, of swaying bodies and shoulders. There wasn’t a titter or a snicker; there wasn’t any smirking or grinning; all eyes were in flood with genuine laughter; men, women, and children were crowing and chuckling aloud, were shouting and hurraying, everybody was convulsed--really I must have looked the white kangaroo for which I was named. The Sydney audience laughing at me before I opened my mouth clinched my success at the Antipodes.”

MARK IN FRANCE AND ITALY

From Paris Mark Twain usually returned disgruntled. His stories did not go in France, and there was that “Dreyfus affair” that made him sick of the “frog-eaters forever and a day.” Nor was Mark appreciated in Italy.

“The Dagoes,” he used to say, “like their humor colored with politics, of which I know nothing, or flavored with risqué stories, which my wife won’t let me write--there you are. As to France--one critical Madame gave me to understand that I am ‘lacking in the stupendous task of interpreting the great tableaux of real American life.’ See? When a wet blanket of that kind is clapped on to you, what is the use of further efforts? I am a dead one, according to Madame, and Mark Twain is too humane to whip a dead horse. I will tell you what is really the matter with France,” concluded Twain. “Every Frenchman who can read and write has in his closet a frock coat embroidered with the lilies (or whatever flower it may be) of the _Académie Française_--hoping against hope that he may be elected to the Institute like Molière or Zola. Hence Monsieur is very critical and pronounces everything he doesn’t understand ‘bosh!’ A joke in Chicago, you know, is a riddle in Paris, and, as one Frenchman put it, ‘I get guffaws out of people by thumping them on the ribs.’ I would never dare thump a Frenchman, of course--I might bust him.”

WHY MARK WOULDN’T LIKE TO DIE ABROAD

Mark Twain cracked so many jokes, I thought I would entertain him a bit myself, and told him about an aunt of mine who, while dying, heard that she was going to lie in state in the green room.

“Not in the green room,” said auntie. “I always hated that wall paper. Besides, it’s unhealthy.”

Twain admitted that was good fun, and regretted not having thought of the green paper himself.

“She must have been a fine old girl,” he said, “to stand up for her rights even ‘in extremis,’ as the doctors call it.”

“By the way,” he continued, “every time I paddle the Atlantic I say to myself, ‘Mark, old boy, don’t die on this trip.’ For, of course, folks have a foolish notion that one’s bones must rest at home. Accordingly, if I died as United States consul in the Kingdom of Sheba--if there be such a place--Washington would have to send a warship to fetch my bones back to America. Again, if I died a plain citizen in London, I would be shipped back in an ordinary liner. But think of it. Before shipping my body, it would have to go into an undertaker’s vault, and undertakers’ cellars are dark and mildewed, and nasty smelling. By George, I wouldn’t like to be in a cellar for a week or two. And afterwards they would place the casket in the hold of the ship with other boxes, and the rats come gnawing about, and perhaps the ocean looks in too and gives you a swim. No, it isn’t pleasant to die abroad. I want to die at home, in bed and in comfort.”

At another time Mark returned to the theme, saying:

“Remember my story about the body in the morgue? They couldn’t make out whether the person was dead or merely shamming death, and so they put a bell-rope in the man’s hand, and later, when the man awoke from his deathlike sleep and rang the bell, the watchers got so frightened they ran away, and, it being freezing cold, the man died a real death. When they next looked upon him, he was as dead as a doornail. No, as I said before, I want to die at home, without any bell-ropes, or undertakers’ cellars, or rats, or bilge water.”

THE LEFT HAND DIDN’T KNOW

“I saw your protégé in Paris--he is getting along finely with his painting,” I told Mark, meeting him in the Strand, London.

“I do not know what you mean by protégé,” he said evasively, “but I am glad to hear that the boy is progressing. Do you know,” he added quickly, “I hold with that famous English letter-writer, whose name I forget, that an artist has brush and pencil and that the public will reward him as it sees fit.”

Of course, Mark didn’t “hold” anything of the sort. He had then supported that bright American boy in Paris for three years, giving him the best of teachers and advancing his chances in every way possible, but he resented my touching upon the subject. I suppose he would have cut me dead the next time we met, if I had reminded him of the colored boy whom he was seeing through college in the States.

AMERICAN HUMORISTS

They were talking about humorists in Mr. Jackson’s office. Jackson was the first secretary of legation, blessed with a very beautiful wife and money. After a lot of talk, Twain was asked for his opinion.

“Well,” he said, “the greatest American humorist I know of is Mr. Fox of the ‘Police Gazette’--the fellow who put full evening dress on sluggers. John L. Sullivan and some of the hard-boiled boys he licked were, of course, familiar to the American eye in trunks and undershirts. Reflect on the giant mind that conceived the original idea of making them look like Kyrle Bellew or Augustin Daly. Fox with that picture beat us Knights of the Quill easily.”

TELEPATHY OR SUGGESTION

In the nineties Mark had asked me to translate his yarn on telepathy for the “Berlin Boersen Courier.” The story had caught on, and the editor kept bothering for more of that sort. Mark had promised again and again, but nothing came of it. When I asked him for the tenth or fifteenth time, he said, “Pshaw, telepathy is out of date. I saw some mental suggestion done at Professor Glossen’s in Zurich that knocked spots out of telepathy.” He asked the rest of the company to listen, and continued:

“That there be no room for deception of any kind, the professor asked me to go to any drug store in town and buy a bottle of distilled water. We scraped the label off, swathed the bottle in linen, and then buried it carefully in a box--a sort of fireless cooker arrangement. This was done before the students began to arrive. When the lecture room was good and full, the Professor addressed the boys to the effect that he was on the track of a new chemical, but that his discovery was still far from complete. The chemical, he continued, had a peculiar odor, heretofore not classified, and this morning he was anxious to study the rapidity with which that odor would diffuse itself through the air. Hence he asked the students to give the utmost attention to what he was doing. Each student was to raise his hand the moment he perceived the strange odor.

“The Professor unburied and opened the bottle, turning his head away so as not to be overcome by the odor, while I watched the proceedings by a stop-watch. The boys were all ears--nose, I mean. After fifteen seconds, most of the students in the first row were holding up a hand. In 40 seconds the odor, which did not exist, had traveled to the rear benches, and when we counted noses, seventy-five percent of the students acknowledged perception of the odor and some even went so far as to be nauseated by it.”

TRYING TO BE SERIOUS DIDN’T WORK

At Brown’s, in London, somebody spoke in glowing terms of Raymond’s portrayal of Colonel Sellers.

“You needn’t praise him for _my_ sake,” said Mark. “I did not write the part for an actor like him at all. I wrote it for Edwin Booth. That is, I had Edwin Booth in mind when I did the play. But Raymond was the superior money-maker. He had the masses with him--and I was pressed for funds.

“As a matter of fact, my Colonel Sellers is a portrait study--a take-off on a fine old Southern gentleman, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, whom I knew in life. He had some funny traits about him, but these never counted with me. It was the pathos in his life that got me. And the pathos, relieved by a few funny things, I intended to put upon the stage. Raymond caricatured the part, and I often felt like taking it away from him.”

ASSORTED BEAUTIES

Of the Vienna women Mark Twain used to say that they were so “cussed pretty a man walking out with his wife feels relieved when he meets a plain one.”

He was reminded of his visit to the Berlin court and was asked what he thought of the ladies he met there.

“They were so loaded down with tiaras, necklaces, and sets of jewelry, my eyes were too dazzled to get a good view of their faces. I am sure, though, that most of the old ones had enormous backs. And that recalls a story that I heard at an embassy here, which I must not name. The ambassadors were talking of the beauty of the women of their own country, and they all looked with pity on the Korean consular representative, wondering what he would say, but he was a spunky chap, and when his turn came, blurted out: ‘Well, gentlemen, as to the fair sex, there isn’t much to boast of in my country, but I _will_ admit that the ladies of our court at home are no less ill-favored than the women of the Berlin Schloss, and they are dirtier, too.’ That postscript,” said Mark, “was the funniest thing I heard in a long time. He said it in a right hearty and well-meaning way, too. He evidently meant it and was proud of it.”

MARK’S CHILDREN KNEW HIM

I congratulated Mark Twain on the fact that he had been mistaken for the great Mommsen, and, throwing out his chest, he said:

“I feel indeed flattered because somebody thought that I have the whole Roman world, with Poppæa and Nero and Augustus and all the rest, under my hat, yet, when I come to think of it, there is some difference between us two. _My_ children know their papa, and I know Susan, Clara, and Jean. But think what happened to Mommsen the other day. He was proceeding to a bus from his residence, when an unmannerly wind carried off his hat. A boy, playing in the street, picked it up and brought it to the great man. (By the way, never run after your own hat--others will be delighted to do it. Why spoil their fun?)

“‘Thank you,’ said Mommsen. ‘I never could have recovered the hat myself.’ He looked the boy over carefully, and added:

“‘And a nice little boy. Do you live in the neighborhood? Whose little boy are you?’

“‘Why,’ said the kid, ‘mamma says I am Professor Mommsen’s little boy, but I never see him. He is always among the Romans, writing in a book.’

“‘Bless your heart, little man,’ said Mommsen. ‘To-night I will surely be home early; tell your mamma, and ask her to introduce you and the other children properly.’”

MARK, DOGS, DAGOES, AND CATS

Mark never tired telling of the Italian literary shark who unsuccessfully tried to blackmail him out of twenty francs.

“He had a peculiar grievance, that Dago,” said Mark. “He vocalized to the effect that he had done me the honor to call four times at my villa and that, just as often, he came near losing the seat of his pants by the actions of my degraded dogs, who drove him off. Hence, he calculated that I owed him at least five francs per visit, on account of his trouble and the anxiety he suffered. But as I kept no dogs, neither degraded nor otherwise, my dogs couldn’t have worried the man. And he wasn’t on my visiting list anyhow.”

“Somewhere,” continued Mark, “I put on record that I know the business end of a horse very well, but I never bothered enough about dogs to make sure of their anatomy. Pussy is the animal for me. You remember my adventures in Koernerstrasse No. 7, Berlin. The women took that apartment in Slumland over my head, and lured me to approve of their choice by having two purring cats on the hearth, when I first saw the place. I simply can’t resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.”

THE TRAGEDY OF GENIUS

On October 13, 1891, Mark Twain and I went together to the Berlin University to see the great Virchow lionized and almost deified by his fellow professors and by the students. Mark was much impressed and promised to give Virchow a good send-off in his correspondence. And on the way home he waxed almost sentimental, saying: “Virchow is seventy years old. In a little while he will either be dead or that great intellect of his will begin to deteriorate, and what a pity that would be!

“There was Emerson, who valued impressions and ideas above everything--in his way as great a man as Virchow and certainly a great benefactor of his countrymen. But Holmes told me that in the late seventies of his long life, facts counted no longer with Emerson, for his memory was gone. At Longfellow’s funeral, which preceded his own by a few months only, Emerson walked up to the coffin twice, probably forgetting the second time that he had already gazed upon his late friend’s face. When he had taken this last farewell, he came back to his seat and said to the person nearest to him:

“‘That dead man was a sweet and beautiful soul, but I have completely forgotten his name.’

“For myself,” concluded Twain, “I have forgotten many a thing, but I will never forget that little speech of poor old Emerson. _Sic transit gloria mundi_--such is the way of the world, a free translation, I know, but highly applicable.”

KILTIES AND THE LASSIE

“I heard a good one on a young Scotchman, a fellow who was always trying to show off in kilties. By the way, Andy Carnegie told me about him. This young Scot, with some other chaps, went on a tramp of the lakes of Scotland, and young Douglas had a good time showing off his fine calves--talked about them and made comparisons with other well-known legs, of actresses, bishops, dancers, etc. (In England all bishops wear knickers, you know.)

“At night the boys put up at a rather dilapidated inn, neither clean nor promising other creature comforts. But the girl who waited on them, maid or scullion, was a dandy--blonde and blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked and sturdy of arm and leg.