Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/240

 hair is an indecent tow color. And how she makes that lean and bony figure of hers cut ice is wonderful. I forgot about her feet. But her hands are too large for a woman. Indeed they are masculine, yet her audience is never allowed to see that. She gets you, and she entrances you by her innate grace—such grace as graces the world only once in a hundred years."

His troubles in America with Oscar Wilde closed another set of literary salons in Eugene's face while in London. For it must be remembered that Oscar's disgrace took place years later, in 1895, and that until his quarrel with Lord Queensbury, he was a figure to be reckoned with in London society. He was at least as important in certain social circles as Lillie Langtry, and was a Mason-brother of the Prince of Wales.

"What a fool I was, estranging Oscar," Gene confessed. "At the time I thought it exquisitely funny, but the British can't see through our American horseplay. They think it undignified and that's enough to kill even the loudest laugh."

"What did you do to Oscar?" I asked.

"The day before his arrival in Denver, where I was doing the Tribune Primer, I impersonated Oscar in the mask of Bunthorne of Patience, driving through Denver in an elegant landau and pair, and creating a riot of mirth. Oscar thought it a good advertisement for his lecture, and as a matter 236