"Yes, and you are fifty years behind us in every other respect!""Yes, and you are fifty years behind us in every other respect!"
As I sat for the rest of my journey in that chair car my mind reverted to another incident that had occurred two months earlier. The inviting causes were similar; but the party of the second part was a very different sort of individual. The judge was said to be prosperous, the owner of many acresof fertile sugar land, and had, or so I was informed, a professional income of fifteen thousand dollars a year. One would think he could have afforded to be genial under such conditions. The other was a man bent and broken under the stress of his years and his trials, coming home, after a lifetime of failure, to pass his remaining days, manifestly few in number, amid the scenes of his youth. What few locks were left him were gray, and he limped painfully when he walked. He had served on the Confederate side during the war, and still carried with him the evidences of sacrifice.
I met him on the railway platform at a little junction town in Southern Tennessee. I was en route to a small college town in Upper Mississippi. We had had a long and tedious wait upon the fast decaying station platform, hoping almost against hope that at least day before yesterday's train would come along and pick us up, whatever might be the fate of the special combination of wheezy engine and spring-halted cars due that morning. As I nervously paced the dragging hours away I noticed this old fellow limping anxiously about, making over and over again of everybody he metthe same inquiry as to the probable arrival or non-arrival of our train; and now and then he would hobble with difficulty over to a small soap box, with a slatted top, which stood just outside the baggage room, in which there was imprisoned a poor, shivering, and I fancy hungry, little fox terrier, whining to be let out.
"Never mind, Bobby," the old man would whisper through the slatted top of the box. "'Taint gwine to be much longer now. We'll be home soon."
The kindly attitude of the old man toward the unhappy little animal touched me more deeply than his own poverty-stricken condition, and so, yielding to a friendly impulse, I stood by him for a moment and spoke to him.
"It's a long wait," said I.
"Oh, well," he said cheerfully, straightening himself up stiffly, "it's so near the end I ain't complainin'. I been waitin' fohty yeahs for this, Brother."
"Forty years?" I repeated.
"Yes, suh," he replied, "fohty long yeahs, suh. I ain't been home since the end o' the wah, suh. An' now I'm comin' back, an' I reckon after I gitthar thar ain't a gwine to be but one mo' journey, suh, befo' I'm through."
I knew that I had met a "Southern Gentleman."I knew that I had met a "Southern Gentleman."
"You mean—" I began.
"I'm comin' home to die, suh," he said. "Not that I'm a gwine to be in any hurry to do it,"he added, with a winning smile, "but I'm tiahed o' wanderin', an' what's left o' my time hyah, suh, 'll pass mo' pleasantly back among the old scenes."
I endeavored to cover up my emotions by offering the old man a cigar.
"I thank you, suh," he said, taking it. "I'm very fond of a good seegyar, though I don't git 'em any too often, suh. Are you a Tennessee man, suh?"
"No," said I. "I come from Maine. That's a good way from here."
And then it came. The old fellow gave a great chuckle, and reached out his hand and seized me by mine.
"I want to shake your hand, suh," he said with rare cordiality. "The last time I see a Maine man, suh, was durin' the wah, an' I was chasin' him with a gun. He was a darned good runner; but I ketched him, an' I'm glad I did, fo' he was a dam sight better feller than he was a runner!"
I must confess that when later in the day I saw the old gentleman get off the train in the midst of a welcoming multitude of old friends, with his battered old suitcase in one hand, and the slatted soap box containing the yelping Bobby in theother—all his earthly possessions—I was glad to feel that he had come "home"; and as he waved a feeble but courteous adieu to me from the platform as the train drew out I knew that I had met a Southern gentleman of a peculiarly true and lovable sort.
One finds much in these little jaunts in the Southland to appeal to one's sense of humor; but after all there is much more that appeals to one's sympathies. I had the pleasure of riding once in Louisiana on a train in company with an old Confederate soldier, who made me as completely his prisoner in the shackles of affectionate regard as he might, because of his powerful build, have made me a prisoner in fact had we met face to face on the field of battle. He was a man of convictions; but he was always so thoroughly the honest-hearted gentleman in presenting his points of view that, although we differed radically upon almost every matter of present political interest, I found for the moment, anyhow, a sweet reasonableness in his principles. His manner was so calm, and gracious, and transparently sincere, that I found him wholly captivating.
His chance remark that he hoped to attend thegreat Confederate reunion shortly to be held at Chattanooga, or Chattanoogy, as he called it (there is always a soft, caressing accent in the real Southerner's discourse that changes a mere word or name into a term of endearment), naturally brought up a reference to the great conflict, and I took a certain amount of human pleasure out of the old man's present content with the general situation, as shown in the naïve statement with which he began to talk on the subject.
"You know, suh," said he, "I feel pretty well satisfied with the way things turned out, even though at the time, suh, I didn't want 'em to turn out just that a-way."
"We are undoubtedly stronger as a nation to-day than if it had turned out differently," I ventured.
"Yes, suh," he said. "If we'd got away, suh, it wouldn't ha' been long befo' the principle o' the right o' secession havin' been established, we'd all ha' been secedin' from each othah, suh; and after the States had done all the secedin' they could the parishes would ha' begun secedin' from the States; an' the towns would ha' seceded from the parishes—until the whole damn country would ha' landed in Mexico!"
"I never thought of it in that light before," I smiled; "but I guess you're right."
"An' that ain't all, neither, suh," he went on. "I'd ha' felt a great sight worse about it if we'd been licked, suh. If we'd been licked in that great fight, suh, I don't think I'd evah have got ovah it, suh."
I maintained a discreet silence; for I could not but feel that I was on the verge of a great philosophical discovery.
"When a fellah's licked, suh," the old man went on, "he just natcherly kain't help feelin' sore, suh;but if he's merely ovahpowahed, suh—why that's very different."
There may be minds to which that distinction is too subtle to be either obvious or convincing; but the more I have thought it over since the more has it seemed to me to involve a profound philosophy which would make the world happier were it more widely accepted by those suffering from reverses of fortune. To me there was a whole sermon in that brief utterance, and the difference between being "licked" and being "merely overpowered"has been one out of which I have derived no end of comfort myself in hours of difficulty. To be whipped is one thing; to be merely overcome is indeed another!
Nor was the old man's kindly feeling concerning the God of Things as They Are, as expressed in words, mere lip service; for in the course of our morning's chat other things developed which I am glad enough to put upon record for Northern eyes.
"I wish," said he, "that you might stay ovah hyah at my home a day or two, suh, and let me take you to one of our Post meetin's, suh. We'd make you more than welcome."
"Yank though I be, eh?" I laughed.
"Yes, indeed, suh," he replied. "We ain't got anything against you on that score, suh. My first meetin' with Yanks in a not strictly fightin' capacity was once when a half a dozen of 'em took me prisoner. I found myself surrounded by 'em one day durin' the wah when I was doin' picket duty, and the way they run me in was a caution, suh. They bein' six to one, I just let on that I was satisfied if they was."
"And what did they do to you?" I asked.
"They near killed me, suh, with seegyars, andmo' real food than I'd seen in six months," he said with a chuckle. "The' wasn't anything they had, from plug tobacker and seegyars up to a real meat dinner that I didn't git mo' 'n my faiah share of."
"And how long did they keep you?" I queried.
"Fo' as long as I was willin' to stay, suh," was his reply. "The minute they see I was beginnin' to feel oneasy they run me back to the line again, and turned me loose. Speakin' about Yanks," he went on, "we've got five of 'em buried in our own Confederate graveyard in the cemetery, suh; and I'm kind of afraid it won't be long befo' they's six of 'em. One of yo' old soldiers from up No'th come down here fo' his health last year; but he's gone down steadily, and I reckon it ain't for long that he'll be with us. When we heard he was an old soldier our Post sent him to the hospital, and he's dyin' there now. He seemed to feel so bad about the idee o' bein' buried in the Potter's Field that we voted to give him a grave with the rest of the boys, and when he goes he'll lie with soldiers, like he's allers wanted to do."
I could not find any words in the languagesknown to me, dead or alive, to express what I felt, and so I kept silent.
"He won't be forgotten, neither, after he gits there," the old fellow went on. "We have our Memorial Day, just as you have your Decoration Day, and every year we go up to the lot and decorate the graves of 'em all, Yank or Johnny, just the same. We put a little Confederate flag at the head of every grave that holds one of our own; and every one o' them Yanks has a little flag at the head of his grave too, only his is the flag he fought for, just as ours is the flag we fought for. It's a pretty sight, my friend," he added softly, "with them five little American flags flutterin' away among the sixty or seventy others."
Verily this Southern hospitality is no vain thing, no mere empty show, or ingratiating veneer to make a spurious article seem real. Personal interest may sometimes rest at the basis of a seeming courtesy. Selfishness may lie often at the bottom of a superficial graciousness of manner assumed for the moment to conceal that very selfishness; but the hospitality that leads a body of old soldiers to grant at their own cost, and to take care of with their own loving hands, a green resting place, alast sanctuary, for a former foe, that indeed is an unselfish, genuine kind of hospitality which, like the peace of God, passeth all understanding.
One of the more serious dangers confronting the platform speaker is the presumption that his audience will not prove sufficiently intelligent to grasp him when he is at what he thinks is his best. I use the word "presumption" advisedly; for it is sheer presumption and nothing else, and I may add that if my experience has taught me anything, it is that it does not pay to be so presuming. If there is trouble anywhere in "getting one's stuff over," as the saying is, the fault will be found in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred to be with the lecturer, and not with his audience.
My most earnest advice to those platform speakers who feel it necessary to "getdownto the level" of an audience, instead of feeling an inward urge to climbupto it, is that they give up the platform altogether, and take up some other occupation where conscious superiority really counts; say thatof head waiter in a New York restaurant, for instance, or possibly that of literary critic on the staff of a periodical, whose chief concern is pink socks, lavender neckties, and the mysteries of lingerie. In these occupations conscious superiority is an essential of success; but on the lecture platform the consciously superior person cannot in the very nature of things last very long: not in this country, anyhow; for, as I have studied the American people face to face for the past ten years in every State of the Union, I have learned that their capacity for pricking a bubble of pretense on sight is surpassed only by their high appreciation of a speaker who immediately gets into the atmosphere of the special occasion confronting him.
For my own part, I have come to believe that each occasion establishes its own "best," and that the chief duty confronting me is to measure up to the "best" demanded by that occasion if I can. For this reason one's lecture should be a moderately flexible affair, which can be so adjusted to each and every occasion that it fits an audience as nicely as a tailor-made garment. A lecture written out beforehand and committed to memory can never quite fulfil these requirements. It becomesnot a lecture, but an essay; not platform work, but literary work; should be read, not heard; and in its delivery becomes not a sympathetic talk, man to man, but a mere recitation.
No one would be so foolish as to deny, however, that audiences do vary materially in their capacity to take in the subtler points of a lecture "fired" at them from the platform. I should not think of using the same phrases in a talk before a gathering in an East Side settlement house in New York that I would use before the ladies of a Browning Club in the vicinity of Boston, or before a body of college professors, or vice versa. But if I were fortunate enough to be asked to address all three, I should endeavor to vary the wording of my discourse according to the several needs of each, and base my notion of my "best" upon the demands of those particular needs. I confess also that if in one single audience all three classes of listeners were represented, I should not hesitate to put my thought into the language required by the capacity of the East Siders to understand, and be fairly assured of pleasing everybody; for it is my observation of the ways of ladies addicted to Browning, and of gentlemen of the academic kind, that theyare after all very human, and enjoy simplicity of discourse quite as much as the other sort.
"The consciously superior person cannot last long on the lecture platform.""The consciously superior person cannot last long on the lecture platform."
There is greater sincerity in "playing to the gallery" than most of the critics of that habit dream of, and personally I would rather fall short of the expectations of the boxes than fail in the eyes of the gallery, where reticence in the expression of critical opinion is not exactly a conspicuous virtue. To put it more plainly, I should infinitelyprefer the humiliation of seeing a highborn lady falling asleep in an orchestra chair because of the bromidic quality of my talk, than be reminded of the same by flying vegetable matter consigned to me by some dissatisfied individual sitting up among the "gods."
An amusing, if somewhat radical, contrast in audiences befell my lot several years ago in the brief space of sixteen hours. In that time I successively addressed the Harvard Union at Cambridge on a Tuesday evening, and the ladies of a Woman's Club in a Boston suburb the following morning. The audience at the Union was gathered in the wonderfully beautiful auditorium of Memorial Hall, and contained not less than twelve hundred particularly live wires, undergraduates mostly, almost fresh from the football field, or at least still under the influence of its system of expressing approval.
As I mounted the rostrum bedlam broke loose: not necessarily as a tribute to myself, but because frenzy is the modern collegiate way of making a visitor feel welcome. Thunderous noises never yet classified shook the rafters—noises ranging from the hoarse clamor of an excited populace at thefinish of some great Olympian event, to the somewhat uncertain cackle of a freshman voice changing from soprano to bass. Pandemonium did not reign: it poured. Not since I visited the London Zoo and witnessed there a fight between two caged lions to the excited, clamorous interest of all the other beasts imprisoned there, have I heard such a variegated din as greeted me on that occasion, and I realized sympathetically for the first time perhaps the true significance of Theodore Roosevelt's "dee-lighted" smile when as President of the United States he took his annual stroll across the football field at a Harvard and Yale game, and listened to the "voice of the people." So contagious was it that I had all I could do to keep from joining in myself and only the necessity of saving my voice for my lecture prevented me from being myself heard above the din.
That noise was the keynote of the evening. I think I may say with due modesty that my lecture had one or two touches of humor in it—three or four, in fact—varying in character from the "scarcely perceptible subtle" to the "inevitably obvious," with other sorts sandwiched in between, and none of them was lost; although I was not permittedto finish many of my sentences. The audience seemed to get in ahead of me every time.
The situation reminded me in a way of the grandstand finish of a poor paralyzed old darky named Joe, of whom I was once told by a Pullman car porter on my way through Montana. Joe had been a famous sportsman in his day; but now misfortune had overtaken him, and he lay bedridden, wholly unable to use his legs, and awaiting the end. Several of his friends, taking pity on him, resolved to give him the joy of one last glorious coon hunt.
They put him on a stretcher and carried him out into the country where that luscious creature "abounded and abutted." The dogs were let loose, and finally showed unusual activity at the base of a tall tree; but, to the dismay of all, the game turned out to be no coon, but a particularly hungry, sore-headed, old she-bear.
As the roaring beast clambered down after her tormentors, Joe's litter bearers, terrified, dropped their burden and made off down the road in coward flight, and it was not until an hour after they had reached home in safety that they thought of the possible fate of their paralytic friend. Conscience-stricken,they resolved to go to Joe's home and break the news of their cowardly behavior to the presumable widow. The good woman met them at the door.
"What yo' niggahs want round here dis time o' night?" she demanded.
"We come to tell yo' 'bout Joe, Mis' Johnsing," said the embarrassed spokesman.
"Yo' kain't tell me nothin' 'bout Joe what Ah don' know a'ready," replied Mrs. Johnson coldly.
"Yas'm; but yo' don' know whar Joe is, Mis' Johnsing," persisted the speaker. "We done—"
"Yas, Ah do know whar Joe is," retorted the lady. "He's upstairs in he bed."
"In he bed?" echoed the astonished visitors.
"Yass," said Mrs. Johnson. "Joe come in ovah an hour ago hollerin' like a bullgine fohty yahds ahead o' de dawgs."
I think I may say without exaggeration that that Harvard Union audience even beat Joe's record; for they were twice "fohty yahds ahead o' de dawgs" all the way through, and as for "hollerin'" they were not so much like one single "bullgine" as like a whole roundhouse full of them,aided and abetted by a couple of boiler factories in full blast.
And then, only sixteen hours later, came the address at the Woman's Club ten miles out of Boston; the same lecture, in a quiet drawing room, before forty ladies who embroidered and crocheted while I talked, and here the point that had raised the roof and shaken the foundations of the Harvard Union was greeted by thetapping of a thimble against the wooden frame of an embroidery hoop!
I cannot say which of the two varieties of approval pleased me more; but I will say that no idea of talking "up" or "down" to my audience occurred to me on either occasion: it was rather a matter of "getting across."
One never can tell save by the "feel" of things in the hour of action how they are going to turn out. Only this last season I found myself, through a misapprehension of the character of my engagement, standing before an audience in a New England amusement park on a Sunday afternoon. I will say frankly that if I had known that I was to be a sideshow to a Ferris Wheel and a scenic railway, with pink lemonade on tap everywhere, and"all for ten cents," I should not have accepted the engagement. While I have admired them at a respectful distance, I have never envied the wild man of Borneo or the bearded lady their opportunities for personal enrichment; but on this occasion in some way or other I had gained an impression that my date had been arranged by, and was to be under the auspices of, a combination of church interests, designed to offset the evils of Sunday afternoon idleness in a manufacturing town. It was a misunderstanding, however, that I now rejoice in; for, amusement park or not, sideshow or main ring, I found it an enjoyable and educating experience.
I approached it in fear and trembling, especially when I noticed as I was awaiting my "turn" the vast quantities of chewing gum that were being sold to my audience by the inevitable boy with the basket. There is always something disconcerting to a public speaker in the constant, simultaneous, and automatic movement of other jaws than his own, and in the face of a collective jaw, made up of sixteen hundred lowers that chewed as one, I feared that mine, singly and alone, would find the odds against it overpowering. Strange to say,however, my real fear on this occasion was not on the score of my audience, but whether I should be able to acquit myself creditably before them. I have fondly hoped that my little talk contained a message, and as I observed these seekers after pleasure slowly gathering, and taking their places on tiers of pine benches under the kindly shade of a row of noble pines, it occurred to me that if there was any fruitful soil for my message anywhere it was in the hearts of just such people as sat before me—toilers, the humbler folk, the men and women whose lives had been too busy with bread-and-butter problems for the acquirement of culture, and whose sole opportunity for amusement, uplifting or otherwise, came on these very Sunday afternoons.
There were men and boys there who under other conditions might have been idling on street corners. I counted three Chinese, several Japanese, and a half-dozen Negroes in my audience. A dozen women had their babies with them, and many a small kiddie, too young to chew gum without exposure to the peril of swallowing it, nibbled and absorbed ginger cookies as I watched them. The question becamenotwere they good enough forme, but could I convince them that I was good enough for them. It was not a question of "getting down to their level," but of my own ability to climb up to the level of my opportunity. For the time being whatever superiority there was was altogether on their side, and the point was how I could prove myself the real thing, and not the artificial; how I could find the common denominator which would enable us to get on "like a house afire" together.
As I was speaking the solution came—and a mighty simple one it turned out to be; for it lay wholly in the simplest possible use of the English language. "Cut out the big words," I said to myself. "Cut out all unfamiliar terms. Get right down to good old Anglo-Saxon. Drop such jawbreakers asdifferentiate,terminology,intimations,implications, andpsychological." My chief hope became that I might once more at least measure up to that condition which was clearly set forth a great many years ago by a Western chairman, at a time when I was too much of a novice to do my work even passably well, who said to me as we walked to my hotel after the lecture was over:
"We don't care so much for your lecture, Mr. Bangs; but we like you, and we're going to have you back."
Whether or not my plan was successful I shall not attempt to say; but I may be pardoned, perhaps, for recording here one of the most delightful compliments I have ever had, paid me by a threadbare workingman who came up behind me as I was leaving the park that afternoon, and put his arm through mine as he spoke.
"Are you goin' to speak here to-night, Brother?" he said.
"No," said I. "I am hurrying off to Boston on the five o'clock train."
"Well, I'm sorry," said he. "I wanted to come out and hear ye again."
Bearing upon the cultivation, or lack of it, of the average American audience, I recall a remark made to me several years ago by a well-known poet from the shores of Britain, who had come here to lecture on the Celtic Renaissance.
"I have had a most delightful surprise," said he, "in the wonderful amount of real culture that I have found in the United States, and especially in the smaller communities. Why, do you know,"he added, "when I first started in on my work I supposed that I should have to spend at least half of my time explaining to my audiences just what a Renaissance was, and the rest in consideration of the Irish movement; but I hadn't been here a week before I discovered that for the most part the people I was to talk to knew quite as much as I did about the history of the movement, and I had all I could do to shed any new light on it whatsoever."
He had, fortunately for himself, made the discovery at a critical part of the "lecture game," as some people delight to call it, that it was up to him to keep climbing, and not waste any of his valuable time trying to descend to a lower level, if he wished his discourse to be favorably regarded in this country—a discovery that I devoutly wish some of our modern editors and theatrical managers, who think they must cater exclusively to a "lowbrow" audience, as they call it, a clientele made up out of the whole cloth of their own imaginings, might make.
Our wonderful West frequently affords illuminating incidents demonstrating the real truth, as discovered by our distinguished visitor. I remembergoing a few years ago into a small community in Iowa, where possibly the English lecturer would have looked for very little in the way of what he would consider learning. When sitting in the office of the chairman of the lecture committee, a particularly alert young man, a lawyer, and a graduate of the Harvard Law School, the door opened, and a splendid specimen of physical manhood, a typical pioneer in appearance, stalked in. The chairman introduced me to him.
"Mr. Bangs," said he, "I want you to know my father."
The caller gave my hand a grip that even now makes my fingers ache every time I think of it. He then led me to a comfortable, leather-covered arm chair, and, after almost shoving me into its capacious depths, seated himself directly in front of me.
"Sit down, young man," said he. "I want to talk to you."
"Fire ahead!" said I. "And thank you for calling me a young man. I've been feeling a trifle old for a couple of days."
"Well, you are young compared to me," he said. "I'm eighty."
"Good Lord!" said I. "You don't look over sixty, anyhow."
"No," he smiled, "I don't—but that's Ioway. I've been farmin' out here for nigh onto seventy years, and we're all too busy to grow old. We live forever in Ioway. It's the grandest country on the footstool."
I didn't feel at all inclined to dispute him, considering his more than six feet of towering height, the fresh, healthful hardness of his weather-beaten face, the breadth of his shoulders, and depth of his chest. I contented myself with agreeing with him. And I didn't have to work hard to do that, either; for I have known magnificent Iowa as a most salubrious State for many years.
"Well, you see, sir," I said, "we can't all pick out our birthplaces. I was born in New York through no choice of my own. Some are born at birthplaces, some achieve birthplaces, and others have birthplaces thrust upon them—which last was my case."
"Same here," said he. "I was born in Ohier; but my folks moved out here when I was a babby. I've lived here ever since—and I'm glad of it. Of course I hain't had your advantages in gettin'an eddication—most o' mine's in my wife's name—but I've got some, and I've had to work so dam hard to get it that sometimes I think I appreciate it just a leetle more than you Eastern boys do who have it served to you on a silver platter. I didn't know how to read till I was twenty-five."
"I congratulate you," said I. "Considering the sort of things the greater part of our young people are reading to-day, I wish that condition might prevail a little more widely than it does."
"That's it," said he. "When a thing comes too easy we're not likely to make the best of it. When I think of how I had to sweat to learn to read you don't ketch me wastin' any o' my talents in that direction on trash."
"Then," I put in, "the chances are you've never read any of my books."
"Not many of 'em," he answered; "but one or two folks I know has read 'em, and they tell me there's nothin' deelyterious about 'em. But I tell ye it was some work for me to get the knack o' readin'; but when it come it come! Ye see, when I first come out here they wasn't any schools, and they wasn't any too much help around in those days, either. What with farmin', and diggin' foodout o' the ground, and fightin' Injuns, they wasn't much spare time for children to spend in schools, even if we'd a had 'em. But along about the time I was twenty-three years old we started one. We built a little schoolhouse, and then we sent East for a schoolmarm, and when she come she boarded up at our house, and I celebrated by fallin' head over heels in love with her."
"Good work!" said I.
"You bet it was good work!" he blurted out, with an admiring glance at his son. "It was the best work I ever done, and the best part of it was she liked me, and the first thing we knew we got married. Well, sir, do you know what happened then? You're a smart man, and you won't need many guesses. It was the very thing we might ha' foreseen. The idee o' me, the husband o' the schoolmarm, not knowin' how to read—why, it—was—simply—pree—posterous!"
I don't believe Colonel Roosevelt ever put more syrupy electricity into the first syllable of his famous "dee-lighted" than that old gentleman got into thepreof his "preeposterous."
"Yes, sir," he ran on, "and there was no way out of it but that she should teach me to read.And she did!It was a tough proposition for that wonderful teacher of mine; but her patience finally pulled us through, and at the end of about a year I was ready to tackle 'most any kind of stunt in the way of a printed page. And then the burning question arose. Now that I know how, what in Dothan shall I read? That's a big problem, my friend, to a young feller that has earned his right to literature by the sweat of his brow. I wasn't goin' to waste any of my new gift on flashy stuff. What I wanted was the real thing, and one mornin' the problem was solved. A copy of a weekly paper come to the house, with an advertisement in it of a book called 'The Origin of the Species,' by a feller named Darwin, costin' two dollars and a half. That was some money in those days; but somehow or other that title sounded good and hefty, and I sent my little two-fifty by mail to the publisher, and within a week or two 'The Origin of the Species' was duly received, and I went at it."
"And what did you make out of it?" I asked, my interest truly aroused.
"Nothin'—not the first dam thing at first," said the old gentleman; "except it made me wonder if I hadn't lost my mind, or something. I satdown to read the thing, and by thunder, sir, I couldn't make head nor tail out of it! I'd always thought I knew something about the English language; but this time I was stumped, and it made me mad.
"'There's something happened to me,' I said to my wife. 'I've read this darned first page here over five times, and I'm blest if I can get a glimmer of anythin' out of it.' She smiled and advised me to try something easier; but, 'Not—on—your—life!' says I. 'I've been through fire and famine and wind and blizzard in my day. I've seen the roof over my head burnt to a cinder by savages, and I've fit Injuns, and come nigh bein' scalped by 'em, and in all my life, my dear,' says I, 'I hain't never been stumped yit, and I don't preepose to begin now, specially by a page o' printed words, said to be writ in the English language—not—on—your—life!'
"So I went at it again. I read it, and I reread it. I wrastled with every page, paragraph, and sentence in that book. Sometimes I had to put as much as five days on one page—but by Gorry, son,whenI got it I got it good, and when it come it come with a rush—andnow—"
The old man paused, drew himself up very straight, and squaring his shoulders he leaned forward and put his hands on my knees.
"If there's anything you want to know about Darwin's Origin of Species, you ask me!""If there's anything you want to know about Darwin's Origin of Species, you ask me!"
"Andnow, my friend," he said, his eye flashing with the joy of victory, "if there's anything you want to know about Darwin's Origin of the Species—you—just—ask—me!"
If there is any man in this wide world who doubts the beauty and heart significance of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, he need only go out upon the lecture platform to have his eyes opened. I know of no workers in the whole field of human effort this side of tramphood itself who need more often the intervention of the Good Samaritan to get them out of trouble than the followers of that same profession.
Indeed, I shall not even except the profession of the Hobo; for there is a certain license granted to this latter sort of Knight of the Road that is denied to us of the Lyceum Circuit. We are prone to forgive a hungry tramp for breaking into a casual hencoop in search of the wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of an empty stomach, and when his weary bones demand a bed there are numerous expedients to which he may resort without loss ofdignity. I doubt, however, that if Dr. Hillis, or the Hon. Champ Clark, or my humble self, were ever caught red-handed with a farmer's fowls dangling by their legs from our fists, or were to be discovered stealing a nap in the soft seclusion of a convenient hayloft, we should get off quite so easily as do poor old Dusty Rhodes and his famous colleague Weary Waggles.
Even as do our less loquacious brothers who foot it across country, and earn their living by making after-dinner speeches to sympathetic farmers' wives, so also do we more advanced members of the Fraternity of Wanderers have often to throw ourselves upon the tender mercies of others to get us out of the unexpected scrapes into which the most careful of us sometimes fall. Life is ordinarily no very simple thing, even to the man who lives all his days in one spot, and knows every curve, crook, and corner of his special surroundings. How much more complicated must it become, then, to him who has to change his spots every twenty-four hours, and day after day, night in and night out, readjust himself to new and unfamiliar conditions!
For the most part our troubles, such as they are, have to do with the natural perversity of trainschedules, or unexpected visitations of Nature which will disarrange the most carefully forecast calculations of men. In the machinery of our existence there are probably more human cogs involved, which require our own individual attention, than in any other known mechanism. Even the actor on the road is better looked after than are we; for he has a manager to arrange for his transportation, to look after his luggage, and to attend to all the little things that go to make or mar the comfort of travel while we of the platform go out wholly upon our own, unattended, and compelled at all times to shift for ourselves.
I have been in many a scrape en route myself; but so far none of them has found me without some personally devised expedient for my relief, or the aid of a chance Good Samaritan, whose constant nearness in the hour of need has convinced me that there are many more of his kind in existence than most people are willing to admit. I have almost gone so far at times as to believe in the "intervention of Providence," and would quite do so did I not feel the idea somewhat belittling to the Divine Intelligence that orders our goings out and our comings in.
On one occasion in the Far West I was so close to a scene of actual murder that I might readily have been held as a material witness, and escaped that great inconvenience only by pursuing the exceedingly difficult policy of holding my tongue—always an arduous proposition for a professional talker. I have faced starvation on a delayed train in Oklahoma, starvation setting in in my case after fifteen hours without food, and been suddenly relieved by the wholly chance appearance, at the tail end of the train, dropping seemingly out of the mysterious regions of Nowhere, of an Italian driving a wagonload of bananas across the track, just as the train was starting along on another interminably foodless stretch; an Italian who with remarkably quick wit—in response to the lure of a new, shining silver dollar tossed into his wagon—heaved a bunch of his stock large enough to feed an orphan asylum on to the back platform.
I have even been threatened with complete annihilation, physical and spiritual alike, by a man big enough to carry out his threat, unless I would join him in a cocktail at six o'clock in the morning, and escaped my doom, not as a great many readers may think, by accepting the invitation, butonly through the timely intervention on my behalf of the blessed gift of sleep, which descended suddenly, and without apparent cause, upon my convivial adversary before he had time to carry out his amiable intentions looking toward my removal from the face of the earth.
But there have been other times when nothing short of the sudden appearance of the Good Samaritan himself has saved me from disaster. Two of these instances I recall with feelings of gratitude, and I record them here with sincere pleasure, since it may be that my willing helpers may read what I have written about them, and learn from the record something of the lasting quality of my grateful appreciation of their courtesy.
The first of these incidents occurred in the distant city of Los Angeles on a memorable afternoon when I was to all intents and purposes stranded; not for the lack of ready money, but for the want of transportation necessary to get me from where I was to the haven where I was critically needed at that moment. It was a matter of making a train or losing a whole chain of profitable engagements, arranged in such sequence that if one were lost the others would in all probability go also.
I was due to lecture in the beautiful California city on a Wednesday evening, and was to go thence to Salt Lake City for a Friday night lecture. Unfortunately for me it happened that on Tuesday I was booked at Tucson, Arizona, and with a strange carelessness of consequences somebody had thrown a glass of water on the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and thereby completely demoralized the roadbed. I do not wish to libel that useful railway system; but at that time the casual impression of the traveler on the Southern Pacific was that its rails had been laid on water, and were ballasted with quicksand. It should be added in justification of the conditions that the irrepressible Salton Sea, a body of water that has no known parentage in the matter of sources, or real destiny in the matter of utility, and acts accordingly, had been on one of its periodic rampages, the proper handling of which had taxed to the uttermost the ingenuity of the engineers on whose shoulders the responsibility for the line rested. It was Nature who was to blame, and not the authorities.
At any rate, however, there were such serious delays on my way from Tucson to Los Angeles that, scheduled to lecture at the latter city at eightP.M.on Wednesday evening, I did not arrive there until four o'clock on Thursday morning, and even a Western audience will not submit to any such delay as that. Thanks to the quick wit of my principals, who stood to lose a considerable stake by my failure to appear, another lecture was arranged for Thursday afternoon at one o'clock, although my train for Salt Lake was scheduled to leave at two-forty-five. The plan was for me to take a carriage out to the lecture hall, about forty minutes' drive from the center of activity, to go upon the platform promptly at one o'clock, to condense my talk into one hour, to leave the platform at two, and drive hurriedly over to the San Pedro station, and catch my train with five minutes to spare.
The first part of the program was carried out to the letter, and at five minutes after two I was at the entrance of the hall ready for my drive to the station. But there was no carriage or vehicle of any other known sort in sight. Through some misunderstanding either on my part or on that of the local managers, the carriage that brought me out had not waited, and there was no substitute to be had within reach. What to do became a mostembarrassing question. The succeeding dates had been arranged in such a way that if I failed to catch that train to Salt Lake City my whole tour would come down with a crash.
Fortunately there was a rather fine boulevard running in front of the hall, a rare temptation to speeders both in motors and with horseflesh; and as my managers and I were standing on the curb, expressing our opinion as to the intelligence of hackmen in general and ourselves in particular, and hopelessly scanning the horizon in search of relief, there suddenly emerged out of the gloom, coming along at a rapid pace, a horse lover, seated in a light wagon, and driving a big bay trotter of no mean abilities. He was striking nothing poorer than a two-forty gait, and as he loomed bigger and bigger as he drew nearer he looked like a runaway avalanche; but as he came the idea flashed across my mind that here was my only salvation. I therefore sprang out into the middle of the road, directly in his path, and waved my arms violently at him. The driver drew in his reins with a jerk, and man, horse, buggy, and all came to a sliding, grinding stop. I cannot say that his first remark was wholly cordial.
"What the dash is the matter with you?" he roared.
I panted out my explanation—how my carriage had not come, how much depended on my catching my train, and how completely I had relied on him.
"Oh, that's it, eh?" he said, amiably calming down. "I thought you'd escaped from a lunatic asylum or something. Jump in. I can't take you all the way to the station, because I've got an engagement myself at two-fifteen; but I'll land you at the hotel in a jiffy."
I needed no second bidding, and in a moment we were bounding along at breakneck speed in the direction of the city. We covered the distance that had consumed forty minutes before the lecture in twelve minutes, and all seemed well—only it was not well; for, arriving at the hotel, I found myself still fifteen minutes distant from the railway station, and not a taxi or other kind of cab to be had. What was more, the electric roads were blocked by a fire or something farther up the street. I was as badly off as ever—and then entered the Good Samaritan!
As I stood there in front of the hotel makingsundry observations, most of them unprintable, concerning the quality of my luck, a man of fine appearance came out of the hotel and stepped quickly across the sidewalk to a large touring car that stood awaiting him by the curb. He opened the door, and after seating himself in the tonneau leaned forward to give his instructions to his chauffeur, when I was seized with the inspiration that here indeed was truly my White Hope. Again I took my chances. I sprang forward, laid my hand gently on his arm, and blurted out: