“Jimmy had never faced that sort of jaw music and knew no more about ‘entrees,’ ‘poisson,’ ‘legumes,’ etc., than the average Irish waiter’s wife. Up to then his dinner had consisted invariably of steak, murphies and pie—the embarrassment of courses described in more or less pigeon-French on the Martin menu, therefore, bewildered and frightened him. When he heard the new manager say over the anchovies, cold slaw and pickled sardines: ‘Well, Jimmy, how would a thousand a week suit you?’ Powers had only strength to ejaculate: ‘The Lord preserve us!’
“The fried ‘English’ sole de-Long-Branch with drawn butter and capers on the side was so delicious, Jimmy didn’t perceive the slight discrepancy in figures when the manager repeated the question in this fashion: ‘How would you like to draw a cool nine hundred a week, Jimmy?’
“‘It’s done,’ said Jimmy, attacking his third tumbler of red ink. ‘I can keep a hoss on that, can’t I?’
“‘And marry Lillian Russell—what a team you two would make,’ seconded the manager.
“Well, to cut a long story short, that rascally manager did the boy out of a hundred with every succeeding course, and when finally he pulled a fountain pen on him, Jimmy signed his laughter-provoking powers away for five hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. Subtract five-twenty-five from a thousand and you will find that Jimmy’s one dollar meal netted the manager exactly $24,700 per annum. Neat piece of work, eh?”
Mark’s admiration for the fair-dealing Osgood was reflected in his own treatment of General Grant. He not only paid Grant double the royalties a rival publisher had offered, but actually wrote out to Grant the largest check any author ever received from a publishing house up to that time.
Yet in the numerous discussions of royalties, authorship and the publishing business which he conducted in my hearing, he never mentioned the generosity he had displayed towards the old boy. Poetry was Mark’s weakness, or rather his ambition to dabble in poetry was; he had no other small vices to shock his friends.
MARK IN POLITICS
The chief regret of Mark’s literary life was that “folks felt disappointed unless tickled” by his writings. Joan of Arc was his first serious attempt, but when he entered national and New York City politics—against Blaine and Tammany respectively—he was so much in earnest they had to hire Bob Davis to follow up his speeches with a few funny remarks.
“Throwing acorns before the swine,” Mark called it. (“Acorn” was the name of the anti-Tammany organization). “Bob had better can that stuff and sell it to the Saturday Evening Post. They will fall for it, all right.”