Henry William Fischer

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I thought so, for a German girl, by her innate heaviness, might have spoiled that nimbleness of language we admire in Heine. Goethe's girls, as their portraits show, were all beefy things—no, not all, I except Gretchen—hence Goethe's Olympian periods, his ponderous style. It's wrong, I think, to credit Camille with mere physical influence on Heine. ”

“ While in London Eugene Field was always talking about the Orkney Islands, the dreariest, foggiest, most uninteresting patches of land in the wet you want to see. He had discovered somehow that Queen Mary of Scots had created that brute Bothwell, duke of Orkney, a title reserved for members of the reigning family. Hence her bestowal of the title helped to emphasize still more the hatred of the nobles against her husband. ”

“ It's easy enough to promote a grocer's or butcher's trade; all you have to do is to get rid of your sour stomach at some Appetite Cure Factory, and pitch in anew with dill pickles and strong coffee and frankfurters and sweetbreads and deep-dish pies. But an undertaker's! Really, I had no desire to pose for Madame Toussaud's dead-uns. At the same time, no dog-gone friend of mine would die, giving me the chance to bury him at my expense. Running away from that fried-fish smell, I always felt like Henry the Eighth, when one of his half-dozen queens wouldn't be introduced to the axe-man. ”

“ Leopold and the Czar were his special bêtes noires. "I'd like to see these two fellows face their people naked except for their whiskers. Let them face public opinion in their birthday suits and see what will happen to them." ”

“ 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. ”

“ MARK INTERVIEWED THE BARBER ABOUT HARRY THAW
During his last visit to London, Mark called me up one morning and said: "My arm aches and I can't do it myself, so for God's sake, take me to a barber who can scrape one's face without taking half the hide off. I am getting mighty tired of being flayed alive in this here burg."
Accordingly we drove down to the Cecil in the Strand.
"I understand you are the man who treats a delicate skin like an American beauty rose," said Mark to the barber. ”

“ Look at those fools going to pieces over old Doc Johnson—call themselves Americans and lick-spittle the toady who grabbed a pension from the German King of England that hated Americans, tried to flog us into obedience and called George Washington traitor and scoundrel. ”

“ Gradually Mark's wrath melted away and he saw only the funny side of the affair. When the lieutenant had taken his seat at the table, he put one knee over the other and ordered his pea soup on the rough—that is, with the husks intact.
"Husks are filling, you know," said Mark, "or perhaps his stomach is full of chickens. Chicks like husks; that lieutenant is human, after all." ”

“ So to Akademie Strasse we went, and duly admired Lenbach's collections. "Mostly painted kaisers, kings, and kinglets, also one man, W. K. Vanderbilt," was Mark's estimate. I saw Lenbach eye Clemens with business in his heart. Mark saw it too. "Wonder if he intends to throw me on the linen, I mean the canvas," he whispered, while Lenbach was busy in another part of the shop.
"It would increase his popularity immensely," I sotto voce'ed back.
Lenbach returned—with a camera, and as Mark looked puzzled, Lenbach explained: "I always get every possible angle I can of the persons I want to paint. ”

“ As every friend of Mark Twain's writings knows, Mark was never short on literary projects, and at the time of their conception all looked exceedingly good to him. As a rule he would start work on the new subject at once with enthusiasm unlimited, writing, dictating, rewriting, dictaphoning and what not! ”

“ 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. ”

“ And now the admired of the most famous General of Horse defies the world to become an acknowledged royal mistress, and her sprig of royalty the black sheep of a crowned family by no means lily-white at that. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ There, at a railway station, Oscar ran against a crusty old farmer who thought himself a lot better than a mere king and kept his hat on.
"Don't you know enough to bare your head in the presence of the King?" demanded Oscar. ”

“ While he read Joan of Arc's ephemeral epitaph, quoted by Lottchen, the stern lines of his face gradually softened and coming to the end, he laughed outright. "Tiptop," he chuckled, "I wish I had done these verses myself. But, of course, if I had thought of them fifteen or more years ago, I would never have taken Joan seriously."
The verses that amused the great humorist, read as follows:
"Here lies Joan of Arc: the which
Some count man, and something more;
Some count maid, and some a bore. ”

“ Tolstoy was right in calling army life 'a school for murder.' In Germany to-day there are ten million men drilled to look upon the Kaiser as a god. And if the Kaiser says 'kill'—they kill. And if he says 'die for me'—they go out and get themselves shot. The blame and shame rest with the big and little war lords. ”

“ When they tortured an accused person, the cost of the proceedings was collected by the sheriff, ditto when they burned some old lady, or a child maybe—it was all grist to their mill, for the Grand Inquisitor got a rake-off on all prosecutions, and in those good old days it cost more to break a human being on the wheel than to feed him and care for him in jail. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Their highnesses stood convicted of hotel looting, yet on account of the imaginary coronet that topped their escutcheon, they were expected to go scot-free, "for everybody agreed that her 'Grace' was plainly a kleptomaniac."
"Don't you think so, Mr. Clemens?" demanded an old countess, coquetting with the last tooth in her mouth.
"I am no expert," replied Mark. "All I know is that the disease attacks only the high born, as you call them, and the well-to-do." ”

“ We agreed that if an emperor climbs the dizzy heights of bookmongerdom he ought to have all the rope he wants.
"And did you like the British better than the Berlin brand of king?" was asked.
"They let me do a lot of talking at Windsor," evaded honest Mark. "I like these folks immensely. Ed is a manly fellow, despite his Hoboken accent—no wonder he fought with his ma, who wore the pants while Albert was alive, and tried to impose her German policies on her successor-to-be. ”

“ MARK TWAIN AND THE ENGLISH HACK-WRITER
A Berlin cartoon paper, "Ulk," once represented Twain as "an Arthurian Knight, canned up to the neck in armour," galloping after kill-joys and such, and picking them up with his lance and warhooping like wild. That's what he would like to have done to the hack of a London publishing house, who had interfered with his copy, striking out sentences, and words, and substituting his own "insular ignorance" wherever Mark's broad humanity ran amuck of public opinion as he, the hack, understood it. ”

“ Just fancy that Providence had run the Equator through Europe, instead of through the Pacific, or wherever it is now. If the Equator happened to be located in the Old World, each of the kings we have seen, and more to be heard from, would be itching and grabbing for it, pouring out their subjects' blood like water (saving their own, of course) to get hold of the blamed thing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I agree with 'The Spectator' that Mark Twain is the most popular writer in the English tongue because he added more plentifully and more generously to the gayety of the empire of our language than any other author, living or dead. ”

“ Mark conquered Germany before he became one of the favorite literary sons of Austria. "I often wonder that they take to my brand of humor so well," he told me more than once in Vienna—"I mean AFTER MY GERMAN TRIUMPHS, for if Vienna Bookland hates anything worse than German Bookland, I haven't come across the likes of it. Each capital thinks itself a Boston and each calls the other Kalamazoo, or dead Indian Town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mark had attended a masked ball at the Berlin Palace and was asked what he thought of William Hohenzollern dressed up as Frederick the Great. "He reminded me of the little speech addressed by a Cossack Chief to Orloff, the lover of Catherine of Russia. Orloff visited the chief wearing a French court costume. The Cossack began to laugh.
"'What is there to laugh at?' demanded Orloff in a rage.
"'I laugh because you shaved your face to look young and put flour in your hair to look old—both things at the same time,' replied the Barbarian. ”

“ When Mark and I were fellow correspondents in Berlin, I met his wife and family frequently at their home, at the Hotel Royal, and on public occasions. The three girls, Jean, Susie, and Clara, were in their teens, and both lovely and lively. At that time the late William Walter Phelps of New Jersey was American minister in Berlin. We had been friends in America and Phelps had also known Mr. Clemens in the States socially. Like everybody else, he delighted in Mark's stimulating company. ”

“ Crane, the three children, and the governess were having breakfast when Gretchen came in, excitement written all over her face; as Mark said: "You could hear her heart beat. There was a frightful commotion under her shirtwaist."
"'Gracious Lord,' she said, addressing me, 'there is a Mister Policeman outside who wants to see you. Gracious Lord.'
"'Tell him to go to blazes,' I said, Susan translating the American classic into even more classic German.
"'My God,' groaned Gretchen, *I could never say anything like that to a Mister Policeman. He is a Mister Policeman, don't you understand. ”