Europe Revised by Irvin S. Cobb

Getting back again to guides, I am reminded that our acquaintanceship with the second member of the Mark Twain brotherhood was staged in Paris. This gentleman wished himself on us one afternoon at the Hotel des Invalides. We did not engage him; he engaged us, doing the trick with such finesse and skill that before we realized it we had been retained to accompany him to various points of interest in and round Paris. However, we remained under his control one day only. At nightfall we wrested ourselves free and fled under cover of darkness to German soil, where we were comparatively safe.

I never knew a man who advanced so rapidly in a military way as he did during the course of that one day. Our own national guard could not hold a candle to him. He started out at ten A. M. by being an officer of volunteers in the Franco-Prussian War; but every time he slipped away and took a nip out of his private bottle, which was often, he advanced in rank automatically. Before the dusk of evening came he was a corps commander, who had been ennobled on the field of battle by the hand of Napoleon the Third.