Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/214

 of Lorne, and come to think of it, I was riding in one of Lorne's carriages. When we neared the Government House, the guards tumbled out like mad, the drummer boys worked like windmills in a gale and the fifes like steam calliopes. Sure, I felt like a hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade and I must have walked into the hall with the strut of Larry Barrett playing the Ghost in Hamlet. It was the proudest moment of my life then—and now I see it was all bosh and balderdash."

Speaking of those Canadian days, Mark vehemently rebuked me when I suggested that the Marquis of Lorne was "a prosy ass."

"But I admit it's embarrassing to visit in a family where the head of the house is a mere Lord, while the wife is kowtowed to as her Royal Highness. Mixes one up so, and I think that in my perplexity I once or twice said a Lord too many, namely, 'Oh Lord, Oh Lord.' I never was boss in my own house, but I like other men to be the he-brute for fair. At Ottawa I recalled a hundred times Lola Montez, the girl who started the revolution in Munich by wearing the breeches at the Palace.

"'I am the master here,' shouted King Louis, during one of their rows.

"'And I am the mistress, don't you forget that,' replied Lola. 210