Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/172

 MARK AND THE GIRLS THAT LOVE A LORD Moberly Bell, the last great editor of "The Times," London, before Northcliffe, was not nearly so Olympian as people thought who had never met him. I often warmed one of the enormous armchairs in his enormous office—Bell was a six-footer, as broad as an ox, and his room at the Thunderer's office resembled a cathedral rather than the ordinary editorial cubby-hole. I brought over Mark one afternoon and he told Bell of the trouble he had buying "The Times" at "The Times" office.

"I offered my sixpence across the counter, saying 'Today's paper, please,'" he drawled, "but was quickly put to the right-about. 'You will find the commissioner outside, at the door; he will fetch the paper and accept payment if you are not a regular subscriber,' I was rebuked.

"Well I looked outside and instead of a commissioner found a field marshal, as big as a house, hung with medals, and festooned with silver lace.

"'Your excellency,' I murmured distractedly, 'I was ordered to find the commissioner to fetch me a paper. May I be so bold as to ask whether you have seen that individual?'

"The field marshal touched his three-cornered hat and replied in the most stately 168