The grocer takes the egg, which is still on the counter, breaks it into the glass, and—two yolks appear.
“Hold on!” yells the farmer, “that’s a double yoker. Give me another darning needle!”
Mark Twain’s mind was a treasure house of hundreds of stories of this type—his humor was so essentially American. My most vivid memory of Sam Clemens is being with him around the billiard table in The Players. He thought he could play Chicago pool, and in the earlier ’nineties used to choose me for an adversary. I was younger and a better player than he. One day, having beaten him one game, I dared to be winning another. He swore at me for some shot I had made, so I said over my shoulder:
“Don’t be profane.”
Simulating great anger (he was funniest when he pretended gruffness) his mustache bristled, his eyes glared, his chest stuck out, and he marched up to me, his cue banging on the floor to emphasize each word:
“Young man, you do not even know what profanity is. Profanity, sir, is the unnecessary use of profane words and, applied to you, no such use is unnecessary. Go on with your —— —— game.”
Mr. Clemens was very individual in his tastes. He was fond of bread and had missed it in Europe. He used to say that the British bread was putty and the French bread all crust. His drinks were always made for him in exactly the same way. His habits were not those of a fussy old man, but rather of a monogamous person who, having fallen in love once, remained true all his life. I never saw him the least bit intoxicated, but he certainly was not an abstainer. The hottest day of summer would see him with a steaming pitcher before him from which he poured a hot punch of Scotch, always mixed in the same way.
He was a genial fellow in a crowd of people and would undoubtedly have made a wonderful politician. I was hailed by him at the Grand Central Station one day. It was in the winter and he was clothed in the pure white that he affected in his later years. With his white hair and pink face, this made him so conspicuous that we were soon the center of an interested group of people, exactly as if we had been a dog fight. This always acted a stimulant upon Clemens, and he began to hold forth in the most extravagant fashion. At last he said:
“Now I must get my train—but let me see—I have forgotten something. Oh, I know! I have forgotten my wife.” Then appealing to the crowd, he called: “Does anyone here happen to know where Mrs. Clemens is?”
A dozen voices answered in the affirmative, and some one ran to fetch her. Mark Twain stood perfectly still until she was escorted to his side by an admiring bystander. I can imagine Roosevelt doing this, but Mr. Emerson or Woodrow Wilson—never.