Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/41

 shop at the lane's extreme end. When I got there, I used to hoist up my coat-tails and skip across the street right into the Public 'Ouse opposite for a Scotch. Naturally I took more or less interest in that cemetery-correspondence school. From a notice posted, I learned that it was under 'new management'—I call that an ingenious appeal for corpses, don't you?

"Well, it wasn't merely an office, the carpentry was right at the tail of the roll topper; there, night after night, an old, sad-faced man sat, looking for customers. Now, the English metropolis is reputed the healthiest city in the world, which proves that the legend about cleanliness being nearest to godliness is blooming rot, for London is ten times dirtier than Berlin, seven and a half times dirtier than New York and six times dirtier than the best parts of Paris. Anyhow, that man-hyena, hungry for worm-food, didn't enjoy the low rate of mortality one single bit. I could see that every time I eyed him, and I lamped him regularly before I waltzed into the gin-mill to drown the fried-fish smell."

"And did one Scotch suffice for the operation?" asked Mr. Bell.

Mark looked at Mrs. Clemens and lied brazenly: "Yes, of course." But as she had risen to go out and was walking toward the door, he added in an undertone: "One Scotch was like taking a bottle of perfume from the ten-cent store into a glue factory to paralyze 37