“Of course you have had no serious quarrel with the Church?” he was asked by Dr. Dryander, the former Kaiser’s body chaplain.
“Oh, my, no—far from it,” vowed Mark. “Such expressions as ‘the duck that runs the gospel mill’ and ‘the boss of the doxology works who waltzed a dead ’un through handsome,’ are idiomatic gems I picked up in the mining camps. They are not meant in derision.
“William was talking with my cousin, General Von Versen,” added Mark, “reporting the case at Mr. Phelps’ office a few days afterwards—otherwise, you may be sure, he would have ordered me flayed alive, for isn’t he the identical gander bossing the German gospel mill?”
MARK AND THE GIRLS THAT LOVE A LORD
Moberly Bell, the last great editor of “The Times,” London, before Northcliffe, was not nearly so Olympian as people thought who had never met him. I often warmed one of the enormous armchairs in his enormous office—Bell was a six-footer, as broad as an ox, and his room at the Thunderer’s office resembled a cathedral rather than the ordinary editorial cubby-hole. I brought over Mark one afternoon and he told Bell of the trouble he had buying “The Times” at “The Times” office.
“I offered my sixpence across the counter, saying ‘Today’s paper, please,’” he drawled, “but was quickly put to the right-about. ‘You will find the commissioner outside, at the door; he will fetch the paper and accept payment if you are not a regular subscriber,’ I was rebuked.
“Well I looked outside and instead of a commissioner found a field marshal, as big as a house, hung with medals, and festooned with silver lace.
“‘Your excellency,’ I murmured distractedly, ‘I was ordered to find the commissioner to fetch me a paper. May I be so bold as to ask whether you have seen that individual?’
“The field marshal touched his three-cornered hat and replied in the most stately and dignified manner: ‘Why, of course, I will get you a paper, Mr. Clemens, if you will deign to wait five or six minutes.’
“Then it was my turn to put on airs,” concluded Mark. “‘I am going to see Mr. Moberly Bell,’ I said; ‘fetch me the paper upstairs and keep the change.’”