"'How late you are!' shouted the irate millionaire. 'Give me the tickets—quick!' The courier, in great haste, fumbled nervously among a confusion of papers in his pocket-book, and thrust into his employer's hand a packet of tickets. The engine was already getting up steam, and there was not a moment to be lost. My poor friend passed the packet on to a guard and asked excitedly for his reserved carriage, only to receive in reply a questioning stare. Alas! The tickets turned out to be of little use on the railway, for they were—concert tickets! The courier, you see, was a singer, and had been thinking too much about his own affairs!"
Mark Twain often amused his hearers by describing in the most humorous manner his own past jokes.
"Some time ago," he told me on one occasion, "everyone went mad about table turning! I wrote a long article on the subject, but in spite of the remonstrances of my publisher, refused to sign it.
"Don't you see?" he added, "I wanted to be taken seriously—had I disclosed my identity, everyone would have taken all I said for a joke!"
So there is something in a name after all, in spite of Shakespeare!
I have, indeed, seen Mark Twain very much in earnest. That was on the Negro question. What seemed to me a great prejudice, represented, in his eyes, a regular danger to the civilised world. Not long ago, a very cultivated woman, just arrived from America, spoke to me with dread about the impudence and self-conceit of the negroes. How different her pictures were from those of Mrs. Beecher-Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin!
Another great personality was Verestchagin, the Russian painter, a very dear friend of mine. I have elsewhere described him as the Count Tolstoy of painters. He had the same genius, the same fearlessness and the same craving for what he conceived to be the truth, and possibly occasionally the same exaggerated touch of realism. We Russians have a way of regarding our great artists as artists, and if they injudiciously dabble in politics, we forgive it when considering their genius.
Verestchagin took part in many wars, and it is not strange that he should say, as he once did to me, that men were everywhere the same, "all animals, combatant, pugnacious, murderous animals."
His remarks upon war are peculiarly interesting at the present time, for he was not an arm-chair philosopher, but, like Francisco Goya, had seen the real horrors of war. He pointed out that the actual killing of the enemy was only a very small part of war, which means hunger and thirst and great hardship, sleepless nights, marches beneath blazing suns, or drenched by rain.
Verestchagin was a great friend of Skobeleff, and this drew us closely together. The two had been through the same war together; and I remember that but for the wisdom of certain Russian officials that war might have been prolonged.