To jail with that low brute satánic!
THE BALD-HEADED WOMAN
Mark called at the “New York Herald” office in London one day when a cable came over the wire, describing the awful punishment visited by the Czar (Alexander) on the mistress of one of the Grand Dukes. The lady had been ambushed, carried off to a hairdressing establishment during the dark hours of the night and there robbed of her abundant locks. In fact, her head was shaved à la billiard ball.
“Very ingenious,” mused Mark, “for who would, or could, love a bald-headed woman? They do things neatly in Russia, anyhow. I remember a devilish joke the great Catharine played on a rival. She had her yanked out of a quadrille, muzzled, and spirited into the basement. There she was whipped good and hard with switches soaked twelve hours in vinegar and salt. Then back to the ballroom and ‘dance, you hussy, and smile, or you get another dose.’”
WHEN A PUBLISHER DINES AND WINES YOU
Mark, unlike many authors, was always on excellent terms with his publishers. He always had a good word for the Harpers, particularly “the scholarly Henry J.” (since dead), Chatto and Windus, George Harvey, Baron Tauchnitz and the rest, but James R. Osgood of Boston (later of London) he loved.
“You lucky dog,” he said to me during my first visit to the “sausage room,” at the Hotel Royal, Berlin. “To pal up with Osgood is a stroke of good luck that you hardly deserve. Why—” (speaking very slowly, as if hunting for words), “Osgood is that rara avis among publishers who will invite you to lunch or dinner or to a box at the Gaiety without tampering in the least with your royalty accounts.
“It isn’t always thus in the ‘profesh,’ you know. Speaking of the profesh in particular, there was Jimmy Powers in New York, a rising comedian, indeed rising very rapidly. He had jumped from 200 a week to 500, when a new managerial aspirant came along, and offered him a tremendous raise, a sort of Chimborazo article, it was to be.
“Jimmy cottoned to the man’s palaver like a donkey scenting a barrel full of nice, juicy thistles, a pincushion perfecto, each one, and promised to go eating with him, a great concession on his part, for Jimmy had lost his own appetite, found a boa constrictor’s, and was ashamed of his big, lumbering appetite.
“Well, they rendezvoused at old Martin’s on Tenth Street and Fifth Avenue, then the most recherché meal joint in town. It happened, by the way, at the period when the deadly table d’hote imposition was just beginning to sprout.