Mark Twain stood still in the midst of Printing House Square and laid a heavy hand upon my arm. “What you tell me is a great relief,” he said. “I thought American girls were the only damn’ fools paying for titles.”
The much-titled Aunt Rosine didn’t die till a year later, but I believe that the false alarm about her demise, set down, was responsible, in part at least, for Mark’s: “Do They Love a Lord?” He maintained: “They all do,” dwelling in particular upon the courtesies shown to Prince Henry in the U. S. After the appearance of his essay in “The North American Review,” I told Clemens of the following incident, witnessed in Philadelphia.
I happened to visit the City of Brotherly Love the same day as Henry and was crossing one of the downtown squares, when a considerable commotion arose behind: clatter of horses’ hoofs, jingling of metal, tramp of oncoming masses. Somebody shouted: “There he is, going to the Mayor’s office,” as I was passing by an office building in course of construction.
The masons, hodcarriers and other workmen heard the cry and crowded onto the scaffolding outside the walls. Some of them seemed ready to take up the shouts of welcome emitted here and there by the crowd.
But the enthusiasm for royalty was cut short by a brawny Irishman, planting himself, trowel in hand, on the edge of the main scaffold.
“None of that chin music here,” he hollered; “the first wan that hollers hooray for owld Vic’s grandson gets a throwl full of cement down his red lane,” and he swung the loaded tray defiantly.
Just then the Pennsylvania Hussars came trotting up in picturesque disorder, the Prince and city officials following in an open landau.
“And you could hear the silence, I bet,” said Mark. “I wish I had been there to see it too, particularly if one of the chaps had attempted to mutiny against Pat’s order. Pat, I dare say, would have licked him until he couldn’t tell himself from a last year’s corpse.”
MARK’S MARTYRDOM
“Well, how did you like your reception in England?” Mark was asked during his last visit there.