And the birds! she still remembers with pride that "they came
boldly into my room," when she had neglected her "duty" and put
no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the wild birds,
and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with pride
that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal
friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship
to her injury: "never have I been stung by a wasp or a bee."
And here is that proud note again that sings in that little child's
elation in being singled out, among all the company of children,
for the random dog's honor-conferring attentions. "Even in the very
worst summer for wasps, when, in lunching out of doors, our table
was covered with them and every one else was stung, they never
hurt me."
When a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are
able to add distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne,
remembers with grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and
distinctions conferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of
the forest, we are helped to realize that complimentary attentions,
homage, distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast
--that they are a nobility-conferring power apart.
We all like these things. When the gate-guard at the railway-station
passes me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets,
I feel as the king, class A, felt when the emperor put the imperial
hand on his shoulder, "everybody seeing him do it"; and as the child
felt when the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized
the others; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her
and stung the rest; and I felt just so, four years ago in Vienna
(and remember it yet), when the helmeted police shut me off,
with fifty others, from a street which the Emperor was to pass through,
and the captain of the squad turned and saw the situation and said
indignantly to that guard:
"Can't you see it is the Herr Mark Twain? Let him through!"
It was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before I forget
the wind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my
buttons when I marked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my
fellow-rabble, and noted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful
expression which said, as plainly as speech could have worded it:
"And who in the nation is the Herr Mark Twain UM GOTTESWILLEN?"
How many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark:
"I stood as close to him as I am to you; I could have put out my
hand and touched him.
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