Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field/Mark Enjoyed Other Humorists
MARK ENJOYED OTHER HUMORISTS
Mark and I were walking through a rather disreputable little street, lined by private hotels, which leads from the Strand to the Playhouse, London, when he suddenly stopped and pointed to a bronze tablet on an old house about the middle of the block.
"Read," he commanded, but my eyes refused to climb to the second story.
"Why this used to be the abode of the poet who has said:
"'The English love Liberty as their wife,'
'The French as their Mistress,'
'The Germans as a Granny, long dead.'"
"Heine," I ventured.
"Come to think of it, I am not absolutely sure, that Heine coined that political document,'* admitted Mark, "but it is very much in the manner of an epigram he did write, I believe.
"'Life's a yawning Nitchevo,
The Shadow of a single nought.
The Dream of a Flea,
A Drama by Teufelsdroeckh.'"
I confess I heard this, too, for the first time; possibly Mark got off the fireworks all by his loneness, pour passer le temps.
"Howells introduced me to Heine," he explained during the entr'acte. "I am glad he did, for I never found in his writings 'the bitter Jew who emptied all the insult in his soul on Aryan heads.' But then I read Heine only for his glittering wit, the scintillating glow of his fancy."