Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/218

 THE MAN WHO DIDN'T GET USED TO HANGING

At the Eccentric Club somebody said: "Man gets used to everything except hanging," when Mark interrupted him: "Hold," he drawled. "When I was last in London" (this was in 1907) "one of the 'Savages' related a yarn to me which flatly contradicts your commonplace idea.

"The incident happened in the good old hanging days, when all London, Glasgow, Brighton, or Edinburgh, etc., turned out before breakfast to see some poor devil dance on air. Henry VIII had two hundred thousand 'sturdy beggars' put to death, besides his several wives; I don't remember now the London average per week or day, but while hanging continued a public amusement it had long ceased being a 'first-page story' as far as the metropolitan dailies were concerned.

"Indeed, the papers disdained to send their 'own correspondents' or reporters to such small-fry events as the taking of a man's or, perchance, a woman's life in public, and entrusted that part of the daily grind to a 'flimsy man,' who sent duplicate copies to all the papers, morning and evening. The 'flimsy man,' of course, got so used to the dope and to the eternal sameness of the thing, he could dictate a first-rate hanging yarn without leaving his office, or using the phone—beg pardon, there were no phones in those days. 214