Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/209

 WHEN A PUBLISHER DINES AND WINES YOU

Mark, unlike many authors, was always on excellent terms with his publishers. He always had a good word for the Harpers, particularly "the scholarly Henry J." (since dead), Chatto and Windus, George Harvey, Baron Tauchnitz and the rest, but James R. Osgood of Boston (later of London) he loved.

"You lucky dog," he said to me during my first visit to the "sausage room," at the Hotel Royal, Berlin. "To pal up with Osgood is a stroke of good luck that you hardly deserve. Why—" (speaking very slowly, as if hunting for words), "Osgood is that rara avis among publishers who will invite you to lunch or dinner or to a box at the Gaiety without tampering in the least with your royalty accounts.

"It isn't always thus in the 'profesh,' you know. Speaking of the profesh in particular, there was Jimmy Powers in New York, a rising comedian, indeed rising very rapidly. He had jumped from 200 a week to 500, when a new managerial aspirant came along, and offered him a tremendous raise, a sort of Chimborazo article, it was to be.

"Jimmy cottoned to the man's palaver like a donkey scenting a barrel full or nice, juicy thistles, a pincushion perfecto, each one, and promised to go eating with him, a great concession on his part, for Jimmy had lost his own 205