Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/82

 I translated some of the verses to Mark, who said: "Too much is enough. I would blush to remember any of these stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna."

I copied one verse for him, and as he put it in his pocket he said:

"Livy is so busy mispronouncing German these days she can't even attempt to get at this."

After some rummaging, Mark pulled out a manuscript that seemed to be of more recent date.

"German or Chinese laundry tickets?" he asked.

"It's German," I said, glancing at it.

There were about ten pages of copy, neatly written and headed "Mein Briefkasten" (My letterbox). On the line below was the title: "Tetragamy by Schopenhauer."

Mark was at once interested.

"Schopenhauer, the arch-misogynist," he mused, "let me see, physically he might have been the grandfather of queer Strindberg of the land where the matches come from. Ever read any of his books or dramas?" he asked, and before I could deny the implication, he was off talking again: "I have studied Strindberg's womankind, hard-faced, sullen, cold-blooded, cheeky, grasping, vindictive, hell-raising, unvirtuous, unkind vixens, all of them—a dead give-away on the author's 78