Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/11

 EDITOR'S NOTE

''Along in 1909, Fisher and I were working for the same newspaper, Fisher as a special writer and I in the art department. We both subsequently escaped, but that is another story. Just then I happened to be working on the BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN (Harper, 1910''). Fisher told me that he was going to do some magazine stories on Mark and promised to let me have proofs, but a week or two later he went away on one of his periodical trips to Europe, and I lost track of him for several years.

''Some time in 1921, I met him on Broadway, New York. "Hello, Fisher," says I, "where have you been, what are you doing, and where are those flowing whiskers you used to sport?"''

"Hello, Johnson," replied Fisher, peering at me through his thick glasses, "I am just back from London, the air raids scared off my whiskers, and my eyesight has become so bad, I am only fit to be a 'dictator' now."

"Well," says I, continuing our conversation of many years ago, "where are those Mark Twain yarns you promised me?"

''"In my head," he said; "never had time to put them on paper." "You know," he added, "old Mark and I spent many weeks and months together in Berlin and Vienna and frequently met in London and Paris, not to mention more out-of-the-way places, and if I really put my mind to it, I can remember reams of Mark''