Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field/Mark Missed Gallows-land
MARK MISSED GALLOWS-LAND
"Every time I went to Italy," Mark Twain once said, "I felt like crossing over into Monaco."
"To gamble?"
"Guess again, when billiards and solitaire are the only games I indulge in. Indeed, I am so ignorant, I would not know a roulette from another baby circus. I was and I am still crazy to go to Monaco to see a gallows, or, preferably, a hundred of them." Mark eyed his audience curiously. After an impressive pause, he continued:
"Once upon a time, in the days of Louis XV and Mme. du Barry, there was a Prince of Monaco who was blessed with a very beautiful wife. Well, evil-minded people said of this prince that he smelled like a dead horse, and Madame the Princess simply could not endure defunct 'gee-gee.' So she decided that she had a perfect right to look for a soul-mate elsewhere, and be sure she got them by the score. Of course not in Monaco, as it is such a small country. She went to France, and particularly to Paris, for her amusements. And every time the Prince learned of a new lover worshipping at his wife's shrine, he set up a gallows and hung the favored one in effigy with frightful ceremonies.
"The country, as remarked, being rather Lilliputian, his Highness had to go to the frontiers for his gallows planting, and as Madame the Princess was of a very changeable nature the principality, in the course of several years, became enclosed in a regular fence of gallows trees. When Paris heard of this, it laughed boisterously at the Prince's strange humor and Madame the Princess's latest lover swore that he would go to Monaco, rob the gallows of their manikins and carry them off to the future Champs Elysées for a marionette show.
"He tried—with a band of companions, but got pinched and was hanged by the neck in person, and not in effigy. Now, I wondered whether these gallows are still standing," concluded Mark, "and if not, I wanted to find their habitat anyhow—make a map of gallowsland, so to speak."
Too bad Mark missed writing a book on so promising a subject.