John Kendrick Bangs

“ Who are we?"
"The Lang Manuscript-Manufacturing Company," explained the young woman. "You are aware, of course, that Andrew Lang is not an individual, but a corporation?"
"I certainly never dreamed it," said I, with a half-smile.
"How could it be otherwise?" asked Miss Phipps-Phipps. "No human being could alone turn out an average of 647,000,000 words a year, Miss Witherup, not even if he could run two type-writers at once, and write with his feet while dictating to a stenographer. It would be a physical impossibility." ”

“ I am now trying to avoid an American lady journalist. I know you are an American by the Cuban flag you are wearing in your button-hole. I know that you are a lady, because you wear a bonnet, which a gentleman would not do if he could. And I know you are a journalist, because you have confessed it. But for goodness' sake, madam, address me as Peters, and I will talk on forever. If it were known on this boat that I am Kipling, I should be compelled to write autographs for the balance of the voyage, and I have come away for a rest. ”

“ I look after the details, and the results take care of themselves. It is the old proverb of the pennies and the pounds all over again."
"It is wisdom," I said, oracularly. "But it must be wearing."
"Oh no," said Sir Henry, with a gesture of self-deprecation. "There are so many details that I have had to make up a staff of advisers. As a matter of fact, I am not a man. I am a combination of men. In the popular mind I embody the wisdom, the taste, the culture, the learning of many. In fact, Miss Witherup, while I am not London, London finds artistic expression in me." ”

“ Consider me, Nansen, used to the cold of the Arctic regions, the Arctic perils, having to wake up every morning in an American hotel or an American parlor-car, warm, without peril, comfortable, without anything whatsoever to growl about. ”

“ I demanded of his publisher, in despair.
"Dr. Nansen has authorized us to destroy them unopened," was the reply. "They contain nothing but requests for his autograph."
"But your letters to him containing his royalties—where do they go?" I demanded.
"We address them to him in our own care," was the answer. ”

“ Just then the train-bell rang, and the London Express was ready.
"Here, Doctor," said I, handing him the usual check as I rose to depart. "Here is a draft on London for $5000. Our thanks to go with it for your courtesy."
He looked annoyed.
"I told you I didn't wish any money," said he, with some asperity. "I have more American fifty-cent dollars now than I can get rid of. They annoy me."
And he tore the check up. We then parted, and the train drew out of the station. Opposite me in the carriage was a young woman who I thought might be interested in knowing with whom I had been talking. ”

“ They are so long and so full of unexpected consonants in curious juxtaposition that they suggest barb-wire rather than literature to the average American mind."
I had a sort of sneaking idea that he would find in juxtaposition a word to match any of his own, and I spoke it with some pride. He did not seem to notice it, however, and calmly responded:
"One gets used to everything, Miss Witherup. I have known men who could speak Russian so sweetly that you'd never notice how full of jays the language is," said he. ”

“ You can always find plenty of unemployed and unpublished poets ready to step in. Our prose hands do not give us much trouble, and our revisers never say a word."
"Have you any novelties in hand?" I asked.
"Oh yes," said Miss Phipps-Phipps. "We are going to supersede Boswell with Lang's Johnson. We are preparing a Lang Shakespeare; and when the copyrights on Thackeray and Dickens have expired, we'll do them all over again. Then we are experimenting in colors for a new fairy-book; and our chromatic Bibles will be a great thing. ”

“ I will go, I thought, to the coldest railway station in London and ask for a ticket for Nansen. A man so fastidious as he is in the matter of temperature, I reasoned, cannot have left London at any one of their moderately warm stations. Where the temperature is most frigid, there Nansen must have gone when leaving, he is such a stickler for temperature. Wherefore I went to the Waterloo Station—it is the coldest railway station I know—and I asked the agent for a ticket for Nansen. ”

“ You are welcome to the idea, but I prefer to make my own name for myself. If you put me in one of your books, I should become immortal; and while I wish to become immortal, I prefer to do it without outside assistance."
Peters, né Kipling, immediately melted.
"If you were a man," said he, "I'd slap you on the back and call the steward to ask you what you'd have."
"Thank you," said I. "Under the circumstances, I am glad I am not a man. I do not wish to be slapped on the back, even by a British author. ”

“ IAN MACLAREN
So pleased was I with my experience at the Lyceum Theatre that, fearing to offset the effects upon my nerves of Sir Henry Irving's wonderful cordiality, I made no more visits to the homes of celebrities for two weeks, unless a short call on Li Hung-Chang can be considered such. Mr. Chang was so dispirited over the loss of his yellow jacket and the partition of the Chinese Empire that I could not get a word out of him except that he was not feeling "welly well," and that is hardly sufficient to base an interview on for a practically inexperienced lady journalist like myself. ”

“ Is he with you?"
"He is, and he's as useful a man as ever was," said Édouard. "He is our head ploughboy. And Calvé's vegetable garden—well, Jean and I do not wish to seem vain, Miss Witherup, but really if there is a vegetable garden in the world that produces cabbages that are cabbages, and artichokes that are artichokes, and Bermuda potatoes that are Bermuda potatoes, it is Calvé's garden right here."
"And what becomes of all the product of your farm?" I asked.
"We sell it all," said Jean. "We supply the Czar of Russia with green pease and radishes. ”

“ I sobbed. "But how? Poor old Spain has nothing to fight with."
"Spain has me, señorita!" he cried, passionately. "And I single-handed will give them battle."
"But you do not know the country, General," said I. "Don't risk your life, I beg of you—our only hope! I haven't a doubt that in a fight with pigs you will win; but, General, the United States is so [Pg 178] vast, so complicated; it is full of pitfalls!"
I could see that I had him worked up.
"I AM TOO OLD A SPANIARD TO BE CAUGHT LIKE THAT"
"Señorita," he cried, "fear not for Weyler. ”

“ My house belongs to a man who does not like the doctrines of my books, and he put us out last Monday. That is why—"
"I understand," I said, pressing his hand sympathetically. "I am so sorry! But cheer up, Doctor," I added. "I have been sent here by an American newspaper that never does anything by halves. I have been told to interview you at home. It must be done. My paper spares no expense. Therefore, when I find you without a home to be interviewed in, I am authorized to provide you with one. Come, let us go and purchase a furnished house somewhere." ”

“ An endeavor to find Rudyard Kipling at home is very much like trying to discover the North Pole. Most people have an idea that there is a North Pole somewhere, but up to the hour of going to press few have managed to locate it definitely. ”

“ Some time somebody will discover some new kind of a freak to interest you people, and when that happens I will venture back for a day or two, but until then I think I will stay over here, where an illustrious personage can have a fit in the street, if he wants to, without attracting any notice whatsoever. ”

“ I have studied with care every railway map issued in the United States for ten years past. I had supposed that Ohio could be reached by way of the Missouri and the Raritan. I had supposed that to bring about the fall of Nebraska where their immortal General—for I admit that those pigs have occasionally produced a man—O'Bryan lives, it could be attacked by a land and sea force simultaneously, should the land forces approach the city from the Chicago side, [Pg 183] and the fleet pass the forts at Galveston and sail up Chesapeake Bay without further molestation. ”

“ Start on C, and go a note lower on each line, and you will get some idea of the exquisite musical phrasing of my greeting.
"Excuse me, Jean," said Édouard, "but we are forgetting ourselves. It is only abroad that we are singers. Here we are farmers, and not even yodellists."
"True," said Jean. "Miss Witherup, we must apologize. We recognized in you a matinée girl from New York, and succumbed to the temptation to try to impress you; but here we are not operatic people. We run a farm. Do you come to interview us as singers or farmers?" ”

“ I love you."
"Sir—or rather mamma!" said I, somewhat [Pg 83] indignantly, for as a married man Zola had no right to make a declaration like that, even if he is a Frenchman.
"Not you as you," he hastened to say, "but you as an American I love. Ah, who is your best publisher, Miss Witherup?"
I shall not tell you what I told Zola, but they may get his next book.
"M. Zola," said I, placing great emphasis on the M, "tell me, what interested you in Dreyfus—humanity—or literature?"
"Both," he replied; "they are the same. Literature that is not humanity is not literature. ”

“ In the first place, any part of Ohio worth talking of is eighteen hours from New York by rail, not twelve. New York Harbor is mined all the way from Fortress Monroe to the Golden Gate; and you can't get to Ohio by a dash up the Missouri River and the Raritan Canal, because those two waterways above Los Angeles are not navigable. It is very evident that you, in studying a railroad map, have forgotten that they are designed to [Pg 181] advertise railroads, and have no geographical significance whatsoever. ”

“ His Autograph on the Breakfast Table was a much better novel than Conan Doyle, and his poem, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' is a thing to be remembered. Still, I liked Conan Doyle," he added.
"Everybody does," I said.
"Naturally. It is a novel that suggests life, blood, insight, and all that," said my host. "But of all the books you Americans have written the best is Mr. Thackeray's estimate of your American boulevardier. ”

“ Singing in grand opera must be very exhausting."
"It is," sighed Jean. "It is indeed. Siegfried is harder than haying, and I would rather shear six hundred sheep than sing Tristan; but, alas, Édouard and I cannot afford to give it up, for if we did, what would become of our farm? The estimated expense of producing one can of pease on this estate, Miss Witherup, is $300, but we have to let it go at 50 cents. Asparagus costs us $14.80 a spear. A lamb chop from the De Reszke Lambery sells for 60 cents in a Paris restaurant, but it costs us $97 a pound to raise them. ”

“ Sir Henry turned to me, and said, his voice husky with emotion: "Pardon me, Miss Witherup! I was provoked."
"It was a magnificent scene, Sir Henry," said I. "But what was the matter with the poker? I thought it rather a good one."
"It is," said he, sitting down on a small chair and twiddling his thumbs. "But, you see, this is an Empire scene, and that confounded thing is a Marie Antoinette poker. Why, if that had happened [Pg 100] at a public performance, I should have been ruined."
"Might not Bonaparte have used a Marie Antoinette poker?" I asked, to draw him out. ”

“ I am no common kidnapper. I do not belong to a literary press-gang. I have simply exercised my rights as the owner of this castle. This man came here on his own responsibility, just as you have come. I never asked him any more than I asked you, and he has had to take the consequences, just as you will have to abide by whatever may result from your temerity. Rogers is a newspaper man, and he tried to get a free interview out of me by deceit, knowing that I no longer do a gratis business. ”

“ Édouard looked at me and laughed.
"We are hard workers here, Miss Witherup," he cried. "And I can tell you what it is, there is no business on earth so exacting and yet so delightful as farming."
"And you are all in it together?" I said.
"Yes. You see, last time we were all [Pg 148] in New York we were the most harmonious opera troupe there ever was," Édouard explained, "and it was such a novel situation that Jean and I invited them all here for the farming season, and have put the various branches of the work into the hands of our guests, we two retaining executive control." ”

“ Thackeray ever did anything better, although his story of Jane Eyre was very good indeed. Fadden was such a perfect representation of your successful American, and in reading it one can picture to one's self all the peculiar qualities of your best society. Really, I am grateful to Mr. Thackeray for his Tommie Fadden, and when you return to New York I hope you will tell him so, with my compliments. ”

“ Let them destroy our navy. Let them take the Philippines. Let them blockade Cuba. Let them do what they please. Spain will wait. Spain will wait a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, a century—but when least expected, a [Pg 180] new fleet, built secretly, a new army, recruiting now on the D. Q." (this is a translation) "will dash into New York Harbor, up the Missouri River, through the Raritan Canal, and Ohio will lie at our mercy." ”