The weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1878-1881, 1879-06-10

- OOe14fe 0fAte kummy nook
Absut EnsnnaA--Psking Fun -
III TAeles.
AParis correspondent Of the New York
World gives a tete-a-tete with Mark Twain,
wherein the huMorist is made to discourse
thus:
Finally came the inevitable question,
Why have you never written q book about
England? I"
al have spent q great deal Of time In Eng
land (your question Is mot d new one to mel
and / made a world Of notes, but it was Of no
use. I couldn't get any fun out Of England.
1t 10 too grave q country. And It's gravity
soaks into the stranger and makes him as Sc
rious as everybody else. When I was there
I couldn't seem to think of anything but deep
problems of government, taxes, free trade,
finance and every night l vent to bed drunk
with statistics. 1 could have written a mil
l'lion books, but my publisher would have
hired the common hangman to burn them.
One is bound to respect England-she is one
of the three great republics of the world-in
some respects she is the most real republic of
the three, too, and in some other respects she
isn't, but she is not a good text for hilarious
literature. No, there wasn't anything to sa-
tirize-what l mean is, you couldn't ~satirize
any given thing in England in any but a half
hearted way, because your conscience told
you to look nearer home and you would find
that very thing at your w door. A man
| ,r;,1, ~ b,p,, L,,ly,l ,,,,lo ,,,sr,t ,,ol-a fnr
of another mans cross-eged aunt.
The English love for the lord, for instance.
l don't mean the Lord of the prayer-book,
but the lord of the peerage.
l couldn't growl at the English love for
titles while our own love for titles was still
more open for sarcasm. Take our "Hon."
for instance. Unless my memory has gone
wholly astray, 10 man in America has any
right to stick that word before his name; to
do it is a shame, and a very poor shame at
that. AT the beginning of this century mem-
bers of the two Houses of Congress were re-
ferred to simply as "Mr." So-and-So. But
this sham "Hon." has since crept in, and
now it is unlawfully conferred upon MEM
UCiS "a tLlC StdlC bCStoldIulcS, anu cVtu upOu
the Mayors and city Councillors of the pal
triest back settlements. Following the thing
a little further. In England temporary titles
are dropped when their time is up. The
Lord Mayor of London is addressed as "My
Lord" all through his year of Office, but the
moment he is out he becomes plain g Mr."
again. But with US, one "Hon." always
"Hon;" once " Governor" always I" Govern
Or" ] know men who were members of
Legislatures, or Mayors Of villages twenty
the papers as "the Hon." to this day. I
know people who were Lieutenant,G governors
years ago, anu they are called "Governor "
to thisd ay-yet the highest title they have
ever had any right to, in office or out of it,
was plain "Mr." You see, yourself, it
wouldn't quite answer for me to poke fun at
title-loving EnglishmenI should hear some
body squeal behind me, and find l had STEP
ped on the tail of some ex-official monkey of
our own. I couldn't satirize the English
Civil Service; it was excellent and ours
wasn't; it was open to everybody, rich or
poor, conspicuous or obscure, whereas ours
was only open to scrubs who would do polit-
ical dirty work for public enemies like Mr..
Conkling-"H Hon." Mr.. Conkling, to use the
obsequious illegal phrase of the day. I
couldn't venture to be sarcastic about the
horrible corruption of English officials, for
how could l know but that something of the
same kind, in a minor degree, might be dis
covered among our W. officials at any mo-
ment? l could not poke tun at the "court
column" which daily sets forth the walking
and driving and dining achievements OF
Kings, Queens and Dukes, while our own
papers have a still longer court column OF
personals" wherein the movements of hall
a dozen Permanent Celebrities, a dozen Ev-
anescents and two dozen Next-to-N obodies
are duly and daily recorded. l couldn't
satirize English justice, for it was exactly like
our W and every other country's. That is
to say, there didn't appear to be any particu-
lar rule i'll the matter of penalties. In New
York have known an Irishman to be SEN
killing his wife, and another man to be jailed
for a dreary long term for stealing a blanket.
Now here is some English justice-these two
paragraphs are from yesterdays London
Stamford:
Hanley-A strange case of cruelty came
before the stipendiary magistrate this morn
ing. An elderly woman was charged with
assaulting her niece. The allegations were
that the1 child had been beaten with undue
severity until she was much bruised, and she
was washed i'll turpentine and salt, causing
great agony. The defense was a denial, and
that the child was incorrigible. The Bench,