“Not at all,” said the Bostonian. “I speak as one of the owners of Chicago.”
The audience rocked with laughter, recalling the fact that this Bostonian had turned a respectable fortune into millions by buying up a large area in Chicago when it was ruined by the great fire.
At another such evening Mark Twain said the circumstance which gave him the greatest satisfaction in his life was the fact that Darwin, for a year before his death, read nothing but his works. Darwin’s doctors, he added, had warned him that he would get softening of the brain if he read anything but absolute drivel.
Sometimes there were discussions at these evenings, and one of them was about the merits of a certain Society poetess, whose poems enjoyed an unbounded sale without meeting with the approbation of the critics. “Do you not admit,” asked one of the lady’s admirers of the editor of the Century Magazine, “that Miss Van —— is the poetess of passion?”
“Yes,” said the editor, “Miss Van —— is the poetess of passion—of boarding-house passion.”
I never came away from one of these evenings without feeling that I had been partaking of intellectual champagne.
When I was in America Eugene Field edited one of the great Chicago dailies, and was the principal author of the West. My first meeting with him was a characteristic one. I was at an at-home in New York, talking to the editress of a fashion paper, who had also written books of twaddly gush about travel. The hostess brought up Field, and introduced him to the editress.
“Very glad to meet you, ma’am,” he said. “I think I may say that I have read all your books with the greatest interest.”
“Are you a writer, Mr. Field?” she asked. “I am sorry to say that I have never heard of you.”
“Nor I you, ma’am; but you might have pretended, same as I did.”