Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/119

 HIS PORTRAIT—A MIRROR

"People wonder why I spend so much time abroad," said Mark Twain at a little luncheon party in Vienna, where young wine, fresh from the vat, circulated freely. "One of the reasons is that I have no doubles in foreign countries, while in the States I had notice served on me twice a month on the average that I look exactly like Mr. Cobbler Smith or Mr. Bricklayer Brown. I was told they had the very same warts, in the very same places, where I sport them—accuracy or imagination, which? The day before I left New York I got a letter of that sort and, having booked passage and nothing to fear, I made bold to answer it.

"'My dear Sir,' I wrote. 'I was so much impressed by the resemblance that I bear your face, feet, hands, mustache, eyelids, ears, hair, eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, and other things, that I had the portrait of yourself you so kindly enclosed framed, and hereafter I shall use it in place of a mirror when I shave.'"

"Wife never saw that letter," added Mark. "She was packing." 115