TWAIN AND MCCARREN MIX WIT WITH ART
And Incidentally Devour Beefsteak and Beer with Cartoonists.
LONG PAT WANTS TO PAINT
Says He'd Like to Picture Some Folks as He Sees Them - Inside -
Twain on Heroes.
Mark Twain, the humorist; Mam'selle Fay Douglass, introduced as "the champion long-distance soubrette of the world"; Patrick H. McCarren, and H. H. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company met some 150 comic artists, cartoonists, caricaturists, humorous writers, comic writers, and other funny-looking people last night at Reisenweber's, third floor, where there was beefsteak and animal and vegetable spirits.
Everybody did something, and many things were still doing at 11 o'clock when Mark Twain, Mr. Rogers, and Senator McCarren withdrew, but at that hour Roy McCardell, exuberant with animal and vegetable spirits, was trying to hold down all speakers to two-second addresses.
This was the first meeting of this company, most of those present being from New York, though Philadelphia and Newark were represented; and some sort of organization may eventuate from the meeting. At 11 o'clock it appeared that the proper name for the organization would be the Mutual Protective Bail Bond Association.
The eating cards were of huge size, so that the artists might write down their stimulated fancies and pass them around. This was done. One of the inside pages of the big card had "Steak" in the size of type sometimes used on front pages to herald murders, and on the other inside page was "Beer," in type no smaller.
The Introductory Speech.
The card was entirely correct in its details. The things on the card were finally disposed of, though the drawing of pictures and seizure of autographs had been going on at such a pace, as said Homer Davenport later, that Mark Twain's signature, which last week sold for a few cents over $4, would now fall below 30 cents.
Walt McDougal, said to be of Philadelphia, attempted to call the meeting to order, and proceeded with his address notwithstanding, as follows:
"I want to tell you of the pride and exaltation that fills me at the thought of having been called upon to preside over the greatest galaxy of human intellect ever gathered under one tent." [Violent applause.]
Voices: "Let McCarren speak."
"You are a dear old man, Mac, but - "
"Call the Committee on Credentials."
"I could make a long speech," went on the Chairman.
"Terrible!" yelled the audience.
"But I will now call on one," went on the Chairman, "who has hobnobbed with royalty, run the Standard Oil Company - "
Many voices: "Pat McCarren!"
Mark Twain on Heroes.
Mark Twain was called, however, and he said:
"In the matter of courage we all have our limits. there never was a hero who did not have his bounds. I suppose it may be said of Nelson and all the others whose courage has been advertised that there came times in their lives when their bravery knew it had come to its limit.
"I have found mine a good many times. Sometimes this was expected - often it was unexpected. I know a man who is not afraid to sleep with a rattlesnake, but you could not get him to sleep with a safety razor.
"I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room. I should be t the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk across a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do.
"I'll sit down."
He was talking across the room.
It must be said parenthetically and looking backward, that before Mark Twain spoke Rennold Wolf had introduced Mam'selle Fay Douglass, the champion long-distance soubrette of the world, who sang a song about somebody getting on a horse with her out around Pueblo, Colorado. Mam'selle Douglass wore a sort of bathing-suit costume. Considerable applause greeted Mam'selle Fay Douglass.
Clarence Harvey was introduced as one who would read a poem. He did not, though no direct word against it was spoken. He started in to say that he thought that what had gathered around the boxes on which beefsteak and beer had been sitting, was the nucleus of a fine club, but he was cut off by this voice:
"Cut that out! That's my speech!"
Mr. Harvey did so, switching to a plea for the return to the simple life of Aacadee, as it is in most rhymes, where (in Arcadee, that is) the dairy maid attends to her own dairy and baby does not have to leave home for its meals.
Senator Pat Says He Got His.
Chairman McDougall said that, nevertheless, he would try for one more speech, anyhow, thus introducing Senator McCarren. Thus spoke the Senator, playing with his apron strings in a nonchalant sort of way:
"I am unlike Mr. Clemens; I know no limits to my courage. All that could happen to be has been performed. I don't care whether I talk across the room or along it.
"I have often thought that if I ever adopted the profession of caricaturing I would draw the insides of some people, using some sort of X ray apparatus to find what they were really like inside.
"Now, the artists, the excellent artists whom I see around me, have drawn my exterior in excellent pictures. They know not what they have done. they have made me popular with the female sex, and they can't vote.
"I have recently been in a position where I would have like to picture some people as I saw them - inside."
Senator McCarren said he did not agree with Frank J. Gould, who was quoted in he papers yesterday as saying that money was a curse. But even if it was, he said, he was anxious to find out just exactly what kind of a curse it was. He pleaded with the cartoonists to draw him henceforth as a man who wanted to be a philanthropist, one who took pleasure in handing out money. He had noticed the pleasure it gave other men to hand out money; he wanted so much to taste that pleasure to the full.
"I have a great deal before me,' he went on. "I now receive a salary of $1,500 a year, and most of that is spent before I receive it."
In conclusion he made this appeal to the artists and humorists present:
"If you can't do me any good, then go ahead and do me as much harm as you can."
Mr. Clemens Gets a Picture.
Archie Gunn, artist, sang, and was going to do it again when Chairman McDougall called upon Charles Battell Loomis for the story about the lady with the gold fingernails.
"Flown!" was the cry.
It was true.
The artist who is best known by the names "Pal," which he signs to his pictures and "the Big Turk," which he does not, drew the beautiful head of a beautiful girl in a few minutes, presenting it to Mark Twain, who said it was the most beautiful thing of the evening. "Pal," alias "the Big Turk," said privately that the picture was not at all what it should have been: He had happened on the wrong canvas. It was an oil canvas. If he had had a chalk canvas, why then -
H. H. Rogers, who sat by the side of Mark Twain, was called upon for words. These he said:
"Mr. Clemens has paid me to keep still."
Bob Davis tired to make a speech and was cried down, Roy McCardell leading the opposition. R. F. Outcault also tried and couldn't.
Then Senator McCarren, Mark Twain, and H. H. Rogers withdrew. But Mr. McCardell said he wouldn't.
At last reports somebody was "singing" at Reisenweber's, third floor.
Return to The New York Times
index
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links
| Search