THE SAUSAGE ROOM
James R. Osgood, the former Boston publisher, later a member of the new firm of Osgood, Mcllvain & Company in London, for whom I was doing the translation of Field Marshal Count Moltke's works, had given me a set of Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth for Christmas, and when I went to see Mark Twain at the Royal in Berlin during his illness, I took the two small volumes along and offered to loan them to the sick man. He was as pleased as a three-year-old with a new toy.
"I always wanted to read these Memoirs," he said. "She was a corker, that sister of the Great Frederick. I most heartily admire her. You know Howells did this translation while U. S. Consul in Italy and they say it is the best ever." He dived into volume one and I left, to return next day. When he heard me talk in the vestibule to Mrs. Clemens, he hollered out:
"This way to the sausage room, where Her Royal Highness' slave keeps."
I went in.
"I am reading this book for the second time," he said, "and it actually makes me forget that I am sick. I forget even coughing my soul out."
Mrs. Clemens seemed to be annoyed about the "sausage," but Clemens said that Heine had had the same sort of chamber when ill
74
