MARK TWAIN

prompter's hole—"Smile, for God's sake smtie]" which
she did; a machine-made smile and it could have sat for
the portrait of the Cheshire Cat in "Alice in the Lookine
Glass," or "Wonderland." ^

She made a great hit, was encored every time she ap-
peared.

When we got to Australia we found that the story of my
burial from Government House was the invention of a
crazy man.

With the House Agent

The Water Co. has sent me no bill, but here is a notice
requiring me to pay up at once and the man who de-
livered it to the servant brought oral notice that if I
didn't pay the water would be cut off. Can you make me
pay another man's debt?

Well, you see, they decline to know anybody in the
matter but the house. It saves (them) trouble. They don't
have to hunt up Mr. G. who may be in Egypt, They know
you will pay G.'s bill and take it out of next rent rather
than have your water cut off.
Have they such power?

Dear Sir, they have Imperial powers. I was going to
say Sovereign Powers but that would be feeble—they
have powers that the Sovereign cannot pretend to.
How comes that?

Well, their charters are as old as the time of the Stuarts
—a time when the king had a finger in every pie—when
he sold for a "king's share" his support to every promis-
ing adventure, like the capture and sale of foreign slaves,
or the capture of English slaves with a water privilege of
eternal duration and autocratic powers, or the giving away
of States and Territories in America and elsewhere, to
"merchant adventurers" and so on. The rest of those big
monopolies have gone the way of all things perishable,

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