"I cannot say that his first remark was wholly cordial.""I cannot say that his first remark was wholly cordial."
"Excuse me, sir, but my name is Bangs—John Kendrick Bangs. I am out here lecturing, and if I don't catch that two-forty-five train for Salt Lake City I shall lose half a dozen engagements.If you have ever read any of my books and liked them, sir, you will be willing to do me a service. If you've read 'em and not liked them, you'll be glad to get me out of town. Won't you be a Good Samaritan and give me a lift to the station?You're my only hope!"
"Sure thing!" he answered without an instant's hesitation, opening the door. "Get in—and, James," he added, turning to the chauffeur, "the San Pedro station, and never mind the speed limit."
I clambered into the car as quickly as I could, and the car fairly leaped forward.
"It's mighty good of you," said I breathlessly as we sped along.
"Don't mention it, Mr. Bangs," said my host. "Glad to be of service to you. I read your 'House-Boat-on-the-Styx' once with a great deal of pleasure; but there's one thing about you that I like a great sight better than I do your humor."
"What's that?" I asked.
"Your nerve, sir," he replied, handing out a cigar.
We caught the train with eight minutes to spare, and as it drew out of the station I realized possibly for the first time in my life that in my particularline of businessnerveis a vastly better asset thannerves, and I have faithfully cultivated the one and resolutely refused to admit the existence of the other ever since, to my very great advantage.
It may not be without interest to record here that in spite of all my trials and tribulations at Los Angeles, the Salt Lake City engagement was lost. Our engine broke down in the wilds of Nevada, and we did not reach Salt Lake until long after midnight the following night. Nevertheless I kept my hand in; for in response to the request of some of my fellow passengers I delivered my lecture that night in the observation car of the stalled train in the Nevada hills, to an audience made up of fifteen fellow travelers, the train crew, and a half-dozen Pullman porters.
I hesitate to think of what might have been my fate had I employed similar tactics to get me out of such troubles in New York or Boston, or some other of our Eastern cities. The chances are that my name would have been spread upon the blotter of some police court as a disorderly person; but in our great West—well, things seem somehow very different out there. There are not so many sky-scrapers in that part of the country, and the horizonof humanity may therefore be a little broader; and perhaps too the strugglers out there are closer to the period of their own trials and tribulations than we are here in the East, and become in consequence more instantly sympathetic when they see the signal of distress flying before them.
The second incident occurred nearer home. It was in Ohio, at the time of the floods that wrought such havoc in Dayton and thereabouts in the spring of 1913. I had lectured the night before at Ironton, and on my way to Cleveland was to all intents and purposes marooned at Columbus. Much doubt existed as to whether traffic out of Columbus was at all possible, so completely demoralized were all the railroads centering there. It is a cardinal principle with lyceum workers, however, to make every possible effort to get through to their engagements at whatever inconvenience or cost. So in spite of the warnings of subordinate officials I took my chances and went out on a morning train which passengers took at their own peril, through scenes of dreadful desolation, and over a disquietingly soggy roadbed, until the train reached an Ohio city which I shall not identify by name here. While I have no hard feelings againstit, or against any of its citizens, I cannot bring myself to speak of it in terms of "endearment," as I should much prefer to do.
At this point our train came to a standstill, and the announcement was made that it would be impossible to get through to Cleveland because all the bridges had been washed away. Motoring over for the same reason was out of the question, and the engagement was lost. I immediately repaired to the telegraph office and sent off several despatches—to the Cleveland people, announcing my inability to get through; to my agents, telling them of my plight; and to my family, assuring them of my safety. These telegrams broke my "financial back"; for when I had paid for them I found myself with only forty cents left in my pocket, marooned possibly for days in wettest Ohio, hungry as a bear, and not a friend in sight.
I did not worry much over the situation, however; for on several other occasions when I found myself penniless in the West and in the South I had not found any trouble in getting some one to cash my check. So, after assuring myself that my train would be held there for at least two or three hours before returning to Columbus, I setoff blithe-heartedly to secure the replenishment of my pocket. In the heavy rain I walked up the main thoroughfare of the little city, and to my great relief espied a national bank on one of the four corners of its square. I walked boldly in and addressed the cashier, telling him my story with a few "well chosen words."
"I thought possibly," said I, as he listened without too great a display of interest, "that in view of all these circumstances you would be willing to take a chance on me, and cash my check for twenty-five dollars."
"Why, my dear sir," he replied, "this is a bank!"
I restrained a facetious impulse to tell him that I was surprised to hear it, having come in under the impression that it was a butcher shop, where I could possibly buy an umbrella, or a much needed eight-day clock.
"I know," I contented myself with saying, smiling the while. "That's why I came here for money."
"Well, you've come to the wrong place," he blurted out. "We are not running an asylum to give first aid to the injured!"
"Thank you, sir," I replied. "You are quite right, and perhaps I should not have asked such a favor—but I'll tell you one thing," I added. "To-morrow or next day when the Governor of this State issues his appeal for aid for the stricken, as he surely will, you will find that the financial men in that part of the world where I come from are running just such institutions, and when that golden horde for the relief of your people pours in from mine I hope it will make you properly ashamed of yourself, if you are not so already."
It was as fruitless as reading a Wordsworth sonnet on nature to a rhinoceros; for all he did was to grunt.
"Humph!" said he, and I walked out.
Another bank was soon found, where I secured not accommodation but a more courteous refusal. The president of the bank was one of the most sympathetic souls I have ever met, and would gladly cash anybody's draft for me; but my own check, that was out of the question. He was a trustee of the funds in his charge—poor chap, apparently without a cent of his own on deposit. However, he was courteous, and vocally sympathetic. He realized very keenly the difficulties ofmy position, and actually escorted me as far as the door to see me safely to the perils of the pave, expressing the hope that I would soon find some way out of my difficulty. I returned to the train, ate thirty cents' worth of sardines in the dining car, gave the waiter a ten-cent tip, and repaired to the smoking compartment absolutely penniless. A number of others were gathered there, and we naturally fell into discussing the day's adventures.
"Well," said I, "I've just had one of the strangest experiences of my life. I've been in all parts of the United States in the last eight years, and never until to-day have I found a place so poor in sympathy, and easy money, that I couldn't get my check cashed if I happened to need the funds. Why, I've known a Mississippi hotelkeeper who was so poor that his wife had to do all the chambermaid's work in the house, to go out at midnight toborrowtwenty-five dollars from a neighbor to help me out; but here, with this flood knocking everything galley west, I can't raise a cent!"
And I went on and narrated my experience with the two national banks as recorded here.
"Well, by George!" ejaculated one of the men seated opposite to me, slapping his knee vigorouslyas I finished. "I'm an Ohio man, sir, and I blush for the State. I'll cash your check for you on your looks. How much do you want?"
"Twenty-five dollars," said I.
"All right," he said, pulling a well-filled wallet from his pocket, and counting out five five-dollar bills. "There's the stuff."
I thanked him, and drawing my check handed it over to him. He took it, and glanced at the signature.
"What?" he exploded. "The Idiot?"
This was the title of one of my books.
"Guilty!" said I.
"Here, you!" he cried, pulling his wallet again from his pocket, and holding it wide open, displaying a tempting bundle of ten-dollar bills within. "Here—just help yourself!"
And yet there are people in this world who ask if "literature" pays!
About the most Samaritan of the Good Samaritans I ever encountered I met in February last in one of the most flourishing of our northwestern cities. He was a Samaritan with what the modern critic would call a "kick" to him—or at least it struck me that way. As I made my way northwardfrom Minneapolis to fill my engagement there I was seized with a terrific toothache which for the time being destroyed pretty nearly all my interest in life. The offending molar was far back in the region of the wisdom section, and inasmuch as it had been somewhat loose in its behavior for several days I decided to be rid of it. All my efforts to extract it myself were unavailing, and finally after a last desperate effort to pull it out myself I returned to my chair in the Pullman car and informed the Only Muse who upon this trip was Seeing America with me that our first duty on reaching our destination was to find a dentist and get rid of it.
"I'm an Ohio man, and I'll cash the check for you on your looks.""I'm an Ohio man, and I'll cash the check for you on your looks."
"I hope you will be careful to get the right kind of a man," said she. "We can't afford any quack doctors, you know."
At this moment a charming woman seated on the opposite side of the car leaned over and said, "I do not wish to intrude, but I have seen how you were suffering, and I just overheard your remark. Now my son-in-law is a dentist, and we think he is a good one. He is coming to meet me at the station, and I think possibly he will be willing to help you."
I thanked the lady, and expressed the hope that he would.
On our arrival at the station the young man appeared as was expected, and my kindly chaperone presented the case.
"He has been suffering dreadfully, James," she said, "and I told him you would pull his tooth out for him."
"But, my dear mother," said the young man, "we are in a good deal of a hurry. We have an engagement for to-night. My office is closed, and we are not dressed for—"
"Thanks just the same," said I. "I am sure you would help me if you could—maybe you will do the next best thing. I can't lecture unless I have this confounded thing out."
"Lecture?" said he. "You are not John Kendrick—"
"Yes—I am," said I.
"Oh," said he, "that's different. You are our engagement. Come up to my office, and I'll fix you up in a jiffy."
So we marched five long blocks up to his office, where I was soon stretched out, and the desired operation put through with neatness and despatch.
"Well, doctor," said I as he held the offending molar up before me tightly gripped in his forceps, "you have given me the first moment of relief I have had all day. My debt in gratitude I shall never be able to repay, but the other I think I can handle. How much do I owe you?"
"Nothing at all, Mr. Bangs," he replied. "Nothing at all."
"Oh, that's nonsense, doctor," I retorted. "You are a professional man, and I am a stranger to you—you must charge something."
"Oh, no, Mr. Bangs," said he, smilingly."You are no stranger to me. I have been reading your books for the past twenty years, andit's a positive pleasure to pull your teeth."
The inimitable and forever to be lamented Gilbert, in one of his delightful songs in Pinafore, bade us once to remember that—
Things are seldom what they seem—Skim-milk masquerades as cream;Highlows pass as patent-leathers;Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers.
The good woman who sang this song—little Buttercup, they called her—was in a pessimistic mood at the moment; for had she not been so she would have reversed the sentiment, showing us with equal truth how sometimes cream masquerades as skim milk, and how underneath the wear and tear of time what outwardly appears to be a "high low" still possesses some of the glorious polish of the "patent leather." Everywhere I travel I find something of this latter truth; but never was it more clearly demonstrated than when on one of my Western jaunts I came unexpectedly upon analmost overwhelming revelation of a finely poetic nature under an apparently rough and unpromising exterior.
It happened on a trip in Arizona back in 1906. My train after passing Yuma was held up for several hours. Ordinarily I should have found this distressing; but, as the event proved, it brought to me one of the most delightfully instructive experiences I have yet had in the pursuit of my platform labors. As the express stood waiting for another much belated train from the East to pass, the door of the ordinary day coach—in which I had chosen to while away the tedium of the morning, largely because it was fastened to the end of the train, whence I could secure a wonderful view of the surrounding country—was opened, and a man apparently in the last stages of poverty entered the car.
He was an oldish man, past sixty, I should say, and a glance at him caused my mind instinctively to revert to certain descriptions I had heard of the sad condition of the downtrodden Westerner, concerning whose unhappy lot our friends the Populists used to tell us so much. He looked so very poor and so irremediably miserable that he excitedmy sympathy. Upon his back there lay loosely the time-rusted and threadbare remnant of what had once in the days of its pride and freshness been a frock coat, now buttonless, spotted, and fringing at the edges. His trousers matched. His neck was collarless, a faded blue polka-dotted handkerchief serving as both collar and tie. His hat suggested service in numerous wars, and on his feet, bound there for their greater security with ordinary twine, were the uppers and a perforated part of the soles of a one-time pair of congress gaiters. As for his face—well, it brought vividly to mind the lines of Spenser—
His rawbone cheekes, through penurie and pine,Were shronke into his jawes, as he did never dyne.
In the last stages of poverty.In the last stages of poverty.
The old fellow shambled feebly to the seat adjoiningmy own, gazing pensively out of the window for a few moments, and then turning fixed a pair of penetrating blue eyes upon me. "Pretty tiresome waiting," he ventured, in a voice not altogether certain in its pitch, as if he had not had much chance to use it latterly.
"Very," said I carelessly. "But I suppose we've got to get used to this sort of thing."
"I suppose so," he agreed; "but just the same for a man in your business I should think it would be something awful. Don't it get on your nerves?"
"What do you know about my business?" I asked, my curiosity aroused.
"Oh," he laughed, "I know who you are. I read one of your books once. I've forgotten what it was about; but it had your picture in the front of it, and I knew you the minute I saw you. Besides I was down in Tucson the other day, and—you're going to lecture at Tucson Tuesday night, aren't you?"
"I am if I ever get there," said I. "At this rate of speed I'm afraid it'll be season after next."
"Well, they'll be ready for you when you arrive," he chuckled. "They've got your pictureplastered all over the place. It's in every drug-store and saloon window in the town. They've got it tacked onto every tree, hydrant, hitching post, billboard, and pump, from the railway station out to the university and back. I ain't sure that there ain't a few of 'em nailed onto the ash barrels. You can't look anywhere without seeing John Kendrick Bangs staring out at you from the depths of a photographer's arm chair. Fact is," he added with a whimsical wink, "I left Tucson to get away from the Bangs rash that's broken out all over the place, and, by Jehosaphat! I get aboard this train, andthere sets the original!"
I laughed and handed the old fellow a cigar, which he accepted with avidity, biting off at least a quarter of it in his eagerness to get down to business.
"I'm not so bad as I'm lithographed," I said facetiously.
"So I see," he replied, "and it must be some comfort to you to realize that if you ever get down and out financially you've got a first-class case for libel against the feller that lithographed you."
He puffed away in silence for a minute or two,and then leaning over the arm of his seat he re-opened the conversation.
"I say, Mr. Bangs," he said, rather wistfully, I thought, "you must read a great deal from one year's end to another—maybe you could recommend one or two good books for me?"
It was something of a poser. Somehow or other he did not suggest at first glance anything remotely connected with a literary taste, and I temporized with the problem.
"Why, yes," I answered cautiously. "I do run through a good many books in the course of a year; but I don't like to prescribe a course of literary treatment for a man unless I have had time to diagnose his case, and get at his symptoms. You know you mightn't like the same sort of thing that I do."
"That may be so too," he observed coolly. "But we've got some time on our hands—suppose you try me and find out. I'm willin' to testify. Fire ahead—nothin' like a few experiments."
"Well," said I, "personally I prefer biography to any other kind of reading. I like novels well enough; but after all I'd rather read the story ofone real man's life, sympathetically presented, than any number of absorbing tales concerning the deeds and emotions of the fictitious creatures of a novelist's fancy. I like Boswell better than Fielding, and Dr. Johnson is vastly more interesting to me than Tom Jones."
"Same here," said my new friend. "That's what I've always said. What's the use of puttin' in all your time on fiction when there's so much romance to be found in the real thing? The only trouble is that there ain't much in the way of good biography written these days—is there?"
"Oh, yes, there is," said I. "There's plenty of it, and now and then we come upon something that is tremendously stimulating. I don't suppose it would interest you very much, but I have just finished a two-volume life of a great painter—it is called 'Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones,' written by his wife."
The old man's face fairly shone with interest as I spoke, and reaching down into the inner pocket of his ragged coat he produced a time-smeared, pocket-worn envelop upon which to make a memorandum, and then after rummaging around in themysterious recesses of an over-large waistcoat for a moment or two he brought forth the merest stub of a pencil.
"Who publishes that book?" he asked, leaning forward and gazing eagerly into my face.
"Why—the Macmillan Company," I replied, somewhat abashed. "But—wouldyoube interested in that?"
And then came the illuminating moment—I fear its radiance even affected the color of my cheeks when I thought of my somewhat patronizing manner of a moment before.
"I guess I would be interested in that!" he replied with a real show of enthusiasm. "I've always been interested in that whole Preraphaelite movement!"
I tried manfully to conceal my astonishment; but I am very much afraid that in spite of all my efforts my eyes gave my real feelings away. I swallowed hard, and stared, and the old man chuckled as he went on.
"They were a great bunch, that crowd," he observed reflectively, "and I don't suppose the world realizes yet what we owe to them and their influence. Burne-Jones, William Morris, MadoxBrown, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti—I suppose you know your Rossetti like a book?"
I tried to convey the impression that I was not without due familiarity with and appreciation of my Rossetti; but I began to feel myself getting into deeper water than I had expected.
"There's a lot of fine things in poetry and in paint we'd never have had if it hadn't been for those fellows," the old man went on. "Of course there's a lot of minds so calloused over with the things of the past that they can't see the beauty in anything that takes 'em out of a rut, even if it's really old and only seems to be new. That's always the way with any new movement, and the fellow that starts in at the head of the procession gets a lot of abuse. Take poor old Rossetti, for instance, how the critics did hand it to him, especially Buchanan—the idea of a man like Robert Buchanan even daring to criticize Rossetti's 'Blessed Damozel'! It's preposterous! It's like an elephant trying to handle a cobweb to find out how any living thing could make a home of it. Of course the elephant couldn't!"
I quite agreed that the average elephant of my acquaintance would have found the average cobweba rather insecure retreat in which to stretch his weary length.
"Do you remember," he went on, "what Buchanan said about those lines?—
"And still she bowed herself and stoopedOut of the circling charmUntil her bosom must have madeThe bar she leaned on warm.
He said those lines were bad, and that the third and fourth were quite without merit, andalmost without meaning! Fancy that!—
"Until her bosom must have madeThe bar she leaned on warm
almost without meaning! Suffering Centipedes!" he cried indignantly. "That man must have been brought up on the bottle!"
I think I may truthfully say that from that point on I listened to the old man breathlessly. Buchanan's monograph on "The Fleshly School of Poetry" though wholly out of sympathy with my own views has long been a favorite bit of literary excoriation with me, comparable to Victor Hugo's incisive flaying of Napoleon III, and to have it spring up at me thus out of the alkali desert, through the medium of this beloved vagabond, wasindeed an experience. Instead of conversing with my friend, I turned myself into what theatrical people call a "feeder" for the time being, putting questions, and now and then venturing a remark sufficiently suggestive to keep him going. His voice as he ran on gathered in strength, and waxed tuneful and mellow, until, if I had closed my eyes, I could almost have brought myself to believe that it was our much-loved Mark Twain who was speaking with that musical drawl of his, shot through and through with that lyrical note which gave his voice such rare sweetness.
"Suffering Centipedes!" he cried. "That man must have been brought up on the bottle!""Suffering Centipedes!" he cried. "That man must have been brought up on the bottle!"
From Rossetti my new-found friend jumped to Whistler—to whom he referred as "Jimmy"—thence to Watts, and from Watts to Ruskin; from Ruskin he ran on to Burne-Jones, and then harked back to Rossetti again.
Rossetti now seemed to become an obsession with him; only it was Rossetti the poet instead of Rossetti the painter to whom he referred. In a few moments the stillness of that sordid coach was echoing to the sonnet of "Lost Days":
"The lost days of my life until to-day,What were they, could I see them on the streetLie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheatSown once for food but trodden into clay?Or golden coins squander'd and still to pay?Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?Or such spill'd water as in dreams must cheatThe undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?I do not see them here; but after deathGod knows I know the faces I shall see—Each one a murder'd self, with low last breath;'I am thyself—what hast thou done to me?''And I—and I—thyself' (lo! each one saith)—'And thou thyself to all eternity.'"
His voice trembled as he finished, and a long silence followed.
"Pretty good stuff, that, eh?" he said, at length.
"Fine!" said I, suddenly afflicted with a poverty of language quite comparable to his own in the way of worldly goods.
"Takes you here, however," said he, tapping his forehead. "Makes you think—and somehow or other I—I don't like to think. I'd rather feel—and when it comes to that it's Christina Rossetti that takes you here." He tapped his left breast over his heart. "She's got all the rest of 'em skinned a mile, as far as I'm concerned. I love that 'Up Hill' thing of hers—remember it?—
"Does the road wind up-hill all the way?Yes, to the very end.Will the day's journey take the whole long day?From morn to night, my friend."But is there for the night a resting-place?A roof for where the slow dark hours begin.May not the darkness hide it from my face?You cannot miss that Inn."Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?Those who have gone before.Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?They will not keep you standing at the door."Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?Of labor you shall find the sum.Will there be beds for me and all who seek?Yea, beds for all who come.
"Ah, me!" he said. "I've got a deal of heartening out of that, and then some day when things don't seem to go just right, I sing for my comfort that song of hers:
"When I am dead, my dearest,Sing no sad songs for me;Plant thou no roses at my head,Nor shady cypress tree:Be the green grass above me,With showers and dew-drops wet,And if thou wilt, remember,And if thou wilt, forget."I shall not see the shadows.I shall not feel the rain.I shall not hear the nightingaleSing on, as if in pain:And dreaming through the twilightThat doth not rise nor set,Haply I may remember,And haply may forget."
The train had long since started on toward our destination, the old fellow discoursing gloriously as we ran along, I utterly unconscious of everything save the marvelous contrasts of that picture—a seemingly wretched vagabond, held in thegrip of a relentless poverty, pouring forth out of the depths of a rich mind as rare a spiritual disquisition as I ever remember to have enjoyed. Our destination finally reached, I held out my hand to bid him good-by.
"I can't thank you sufficiently," I said, "for a wonderful hour. I want you to do something for me. You see you have the advantage of me. You know who I am; but I don't know who you are. Won't you tell me your name, that I may add it to the list of my friends?"
The old fellow's eyes filled with tears. He laid his hand gently on my shoulder. "My young friend," he said, his voice growing hoarse and husky again, "whoI am is one of the least important things on the face of God's beautiful green earth. What is really important is the kind of man I am.I am one of those unfortunates who started in life at the top of the ladder and moved in the only direction he thought was left open to him."
He seized my hand, gave it a soft, seemingly affectionate pressure, and walked away, leaving me standing alone, and I have not seen nor heard from him since.
In a previous chapter of these rambling reminiscences I have said that I defied any really human man to return from a lecture season in this country in a pessimistic frame of mind. To this defiance I would add another. I defy any man possessed of a hide anywhere short of that of a rhinoceros, or a head of a thickness less than solid ivory, to return from a tour of our country with any greater sense of his own importance than he is entitled to.
There are a good many plain truths spoken in the presence of the lecturer by the good people to whom he is consigned, especially in our delightfully frank West, where they seem to have acquired the knack of drawing a clean-cut distinction between the lecturer as a man and the lecturer as a lecturer. Discourtesy is never encountered anywhere. At least in the ten years of my platform experience, with nearly a thousand publicappearances to my credit, I have met with it only twice, and on both occasions in Eastern communities; a proportion so negligible as to amount really to nothing. Hospitality to the man has always been cordial; the attitude toward the lecturer respectful. But in the showing of this respect there is no slopping over, though now and then there is an atmosphere of reserve in its manifestation which serves the lecturer better in the line of criticism, if he is capable of sensing its significance, than any amount of outspoken condemnation.
There is one element in the work of the Man on the Platform that is in itself of the highest disciplinary value, and that is that in all circumstanceshe must deliver his goods himself. There is nothing vicarious about the operation. No substitute can relieve him of that necessity. The man who writes books, or makes shoes or motor-cars, can sit apart and let others face whatsoever blame may be visited upon a middle man for defects of workmanship; but for the lecturer there is no such happy shifting of responsibility. If people find his discourse dull, they either get up and walk out, or, as the saying is, they "go to sleep in his face."
"The lecturer must deliver the goods!""The lecturer must deliver the goods!"
Occasionally, however, an ostentatiously emphatic expression of disapproval gives the man on the platform a chance to redeem himself. It is told of Henry Ward Beecher that on one occasion something he had said proved so offensive to one of his auditors, who happened to be sitting in the front row of a large and reverberant auditorium, that the individual rose bruskly and walked out. As a sort of underscoring of his disapproval the protesting soul was aided by a pair of new shoes that squeaked so audibly as he strode down the aisle that they distracted the attention of everybody.Mr. Beecher immediately stopped short, and waited until the dissatisfied person had faded through the doorway and the last echo of his suffering boots had died away, and then, with a benignant smile, recited that good old nursery rime so dear to the hearts of our childhood:
Rings on his fingers,And bells on his toes;He shall have musicWherever he goes.
It was a bit of ready repartee that captivated the audience, and if there were present any others who later found themselves in a protesting mood it is pretty certain that they waited for a safer occasion upon which to manifest it. Mr. Beecher on his feet was never a man to be trifled with.
On a stumping campaign myself a number of years ago I was confronted by a somewhat similar condition. An allusion to a statesman whom I greatly admired elicited a decided hiss from a group of hostiles seated under the gallery of a rural opera house. I silenced the hiss by pausing in my remarks and appealing to the janitor to "turn off that steam radiator," since the hall was evidently already too hot for the comfort of someof the audience. It was not particularly deft, but it served the purpose, and we heard no more from that particular quarter for the rest of the evening.
It is a safer rule, however, for the speaker to try to conciliate the hostile element, and it has been a rule of mine for the last five years to endeavor to locate such centers of frigidity as may be found before me, and then direct all my energies toward "thawing them out." Popular as the platform is in all parts of the country to-day, there is always present in every community a small leaven of at least reluctant men who are dragged unwillingly to the lecture halls by their enthusiastic wives, when, if they were only permitted to have their own way, they would be resting tranquilly at home, slippers on feet, feet on fender, book or favorite newspaper in hand, and a sweet-scented briarwood pipe for company. It is not difficult to locate these sufferers. They are such conscious martyrs that they immediately betray themselves, and as a rule while my chairmen are introducing me to my audiences I scan the rows of faces before me in search of them.
They have certain unmistakable earmarks thatbetray them to the sympathetic eye—which, with all due modesty, I may claim mine to be; for, while I love lecturing, being lectured to or at, as the case may be, bores me to extinction. I am like those doctors who rejoice in the opportunity to amputate another man's leg, but would not give seven cents to cut off one or both of their own.
The first of these earmarks is the expression of the face, which is either one of hopeless resignation, or full of lowering, one might almost say vengeful, contempt, as if the owner of the face were calling down inwardly all the wrath of Heaven upon the lecturer in particular, and the whole lyceum movement in general. With both these expressions go arms tightly folded across the breast, as though the sufferer were really trying hard to hold himself in.
"They may 'go to sleep in his face.'""They may 'go to sleep in his face.'"
The second almost certain manifestation is in the physical relation of the sufferer to the chair in which he sits. He makes it bear the heavy material burden of his despair by sitting not as Nature intended that he should sit, but as nearly upon the small of his back as the available space at his disposal will permit. If he occupy an aisle seat, he sits wholly on the small of his back, with his legs crossed, and his hands tightly clasped across his freer knee.
Once located, this man is the special person that I go after. It becomes my persistent effort, and in so far as I can master the situation my determination, to win his reluctant heart. If I can only get him sitting up like a vertebrate animal, using his spine like a prop instead of like a hammock, and returning my gaze with a gleam of interest, I am happy. If I can get him not only to sit up but to lean forward with his head cocked to one side, much as a horse will cock its ears when something unexpected comes within the range of its vision, I feel that I have scored a triumph. I should say that at a rough guess in eight cases out of ten the effort is successful, although there have been ninth and tenth cases that have chilled me tothe marrow, and sent me home with an uncomfortable sense of failure.
My lamented friend, the late R. K. Munkittrick, an American humorist who never really received the full measure of appreciation to which his delicious humor entitled him, once when we were "reading" together one night at Albany, scoring a fiasco so complete that we could only laugh over it, put the situation before me in terms so wholly comprehensive that I have never forgotten it.
"See that red-headed chap in the fourth row?" he whispered, as the chairman was indulging in some extended remarks concerning our greatness to which we could never hope to live up.
"You mean the pall bearer with the green necktie?" I asked.
"Yes," said Munkittrick, "he's the one."
"Well—what of him?" said I.
"Oh, nothing," grinned Munkittrick, "but I'll bet you seven dollars and forty-seven cents he's bet the boxoffice fifty cents we can't make him laugh."
I may record with due humility that if good oldMunkittrick's surmise was correct our highly chromatic but otherwise funereal friend won his bet. I doubt we could have moved him with dynamite.
But these gentlemen serve a highly useful purpose. They keep us with our feet on the earth, and prevent us from soaring too high in our own estimation.
Another effective factor in this disciplinary element in platform work is the "back-handed" compliment that leaves the party of the second part suspended like Mahomet's coffin, midway between heaven and earth, and in some uncertainty as to exactly where "he is going to get off." I have rejoiced in several such. The great State of Pennsylvania, which has "officially" done so much for the platform by its liberal appropriations for teachers' institutes, enabling the school centers to secure the services of speakers of high cost who would otherwise be beyond their reach, is responsible for one of these.
It occurred some three years ago, and grew out of an unexpected summons by wire from one of the largest cities of the Quaker State asking me to "fill in" for Dr. Griggs, who because of suddenindisposition was unable to meet his engagement in a large and important course there. It was an emergency call, which fortunately found me disengaged, and willing to serve.
The chairman of the occasion was a delightful individual, with a considerable fund of dry humor, and his introduction was a gem of subtle wit. It occupied about fifteen minutes, the first five of which were devoted to matters pertaining to the course; the second five to a well deserved eulogy of Dr. Griggs for his inspiring lectures and the uplifting nature of his work, coupled with an expression of the intense disappointment which he, the chairman, knew the audience must feel on learning that the good doctor could not be present. I thought he rather rubbed the "disappointment" idea in a little too vigorously; but I tried not to show it, and sat through that part of the chairman's remarks with the usual stereotyped smile of satisfaction at hearing a colleague so highly spoken of. This done, the chairman launched himself upon a four-minute discourse upon what he called "The Age of Substitution."
"You know, my friends," said he, "that thisgreat age in which we live is so rich in resources that at times when we cannot immediately lay our hands on some particular article we happen to want there is always to be found somewhere ajust as good asarticle to take its place. If you desire a particular kind of porous plaster to soothe an all-too-self-conscious spine, and the druggist you call upon for aid does not chance to have it in stock, he invariably has another at hand which he assures you will do quite as well. So it is with the nerve foods, breakfast foods, corn plasters, face powders, facial soaps, suspenders, corsets, liver pills, and lecturers. If we haven't what you want, we have something just as good in this Age of Substitution. So is it with us to-night. While we may not receive the all-wool-and-a-yard-wide spiritual uplift that Dr. Griggs would have given us, we are privileged to listen to the near-silk humor of a substitute, who, the committee in charge venture to hope, will prove to bejust as good asthe other. We of course don't know that it will be; but we live in hope as well as on it, and, lacking the great satisfaction that I had expected to be mine in presenting Dr. Griggs to you this evening, it still gives me a certain melancholy pleasureto introduce to this audience that highly mercerized near-speaker, Mr. Just-as-Good-as K. Bangs, on whose behalf I bespeak your charity and your tolerance."
As a rule I like to play a little with my chairmen; but I deemed it unwise on this occasion to "monkey with a buzz saw," and plunged directly into the work in hand without venturing upon the usual facetious preliminaries. I felt that I had enough work cut out for me already, and for an hour and a half exerted myself strenuously to bejust as good asI could be, neither more nor less. Then, when it was all over, and my case was in the hands of the jury, a charming woman, with a delectable smile on her face, came rushing up to the platform. She seized my hand and shook it vigorously as she spoke.
"Oh, Mr. Bangs," she said with an enthusiasm so delightful that I listened eagerly for the honeyed words to come, "we are so glad you came!You have made our disappointment complete!"
Another incident I prefer not to locate other than by saying that it was in the West—and where the West begins no man may say. I know a New York lady to whom it begins at the Cortlandtstreet opening of Mr. McAdoo's Hudson River tubes, who has no notion at all that anything lies beyond save the names of a few cities that mean nothing to her, and the Rocky Mountains. With others it begins on the banks of the Mississippi. Once in the heart of Iowa, when I was speaking to a young college student there on the glorious opportunities of the West, in the hope of making him see how much I appreciated the wonderful country in which he lived, the young man staggered me with the reply:
"Yes, sir, I believe you are right.My father wants me to go West when I get through with my work here."
So it would seem that the old rime about the little insect—
Every flea has a little flea to bite him,And so it goes ad infinitem—
may very well be adapted to the uses of those good souls who now and then try to reach the infinity of westernness. But there is another poem more directly applicable to some conclusion as to the problem, which I like to think of in moments when I am reflecting upon its cordial welcome to me:
Out where the hand clasp's a little stronger,Out where a smile dwells a little longer—That's where the West begins.Out where the sun is a little brighter,Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter,Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter—That's where the West begins.Out where the world is in the making,Where fewer hearts with despair are aching—That's where the West begins.Where there's more of singing and less of sighing;Where there's more of giving and less of buying,And a man makes friends without half trying—That's where the West begins.
The author of those lines, who was, I believe, Arthur Chapman of Denver, seems to me to have come closer to a solution of the problem than any other. For our own purposes just now, however, let us say that the incident to which I wish to refer took place in that part of the West which lies between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate.
My audience in this particular spot was delightfully responsive; so much so that I was all of two hours in the delivery of a lecture that ordinarily takes me an hour and a quarter to deliver. It was as exhilarating as a cross-country run, with turf and skies just right. But for the pauses made necessary by the interruptions in appreciationI should have galloped across the finish line in less than an hour. So stimulating in fact was the readiness of the good people before me to take what I had to say and run away with it, that, while I was immortally tired when I went out upon the platform, when I finished I could have started in and done it all over again with zest.
But even with so pleasing a background of responsiveness, there was one young man seated in the front row who was a source of particular pleasure to me. He was a rather distinguished looking youth, with flashing eyes, and somewhat longish blond hair, and a physique that suggested a modern Viking. There was something in his face that suggested the scholarly habit—occasionally his expression was wistfully questioning. His eyes never left my face while I was speaking, and his physical attitude, forward-leaning, and a trifle tense, seemed to betoken an interest in what I had to say that was more than gratifying, and his mouth was kept half open, ever ready for action. If there was to be anything to laugh at, he at least was not going to be caught napping, or in any way unprepared, if by keeping his mouthopen he could remove all obstacles that would have prevented the easy flow of his mirth.
And his laugh! I wish I might have a rubber record of that laugh to secrete in an automatic machine located somewhere in the middle of my lecture halls, so that in response to the pressure of an electric button it could be let loose at certain psychological moments. It was as infectious a laugh as I ever listened to, and there were times when its contagion brought me perilously close to seeming to laugh at my own jokes—which is a dangerous thing for a lecturer to do, and contrary to the technic of the "business," which requires humorous periods to be delivered with a face solemn to the point of the funereal. It had really musical modulations, rising from pianissimo to fortissimo on the wings of nicely graded crescendos, and returning whence it had come with a sort of rippling gurgle that was mighty fetching.
Finally not only was nothing I had in mind lost upon him, but he actually appeared to discover subtleties of wit in my discourse of whose presence I had not myself had the slightest suspicion. It is hardly necessary to say that he was pleasingunto my soul, and naturally enough I spoke of him afterward to my chairman.
"Well, Mr. Bangs," said the chairman as we walked back to the hotel together after the lecture was over, "what did you think of your audience to-night? Some responsiveness there, all right, eh?"
I was impulsively enthusiastic enough to say that I thought it was a "corking good audience." "If they were all like that," said I, "this work would be as easy as cutting calves-foot jelly with an ax."
"I thought you liked them," said he. "Our people here are appreciative, and they believe the laborer is worthy of his hire in showing it."
"I'll put Blanksville down in my red-letter book," said I. "But tell me who and what is that rather distinguished looking young man with the longish blond hair and snappy eyes, who sat in the aisle seat of the front row next to the white-haired old lady with an audiphone? He had a wistful sort of face, and—"
"Oh, I know who you mean," said the chairman. "He's So-and-So. What about him—he didn't bother you, I hope?"
"On the contrary," said I, "I loved him. He was about the most appreciative chap I ever talked to. He fairly hung on every word I spoke, and when it came to a funny point I'm blest if he didn't meet me more than halfway!"
"Yes," said the chairman, "he would. He's half-witted."
My swelling head immediately resumed its normal proportions, and when I left Blanksville the following morning the only discomfort I found in wearing my regular hat was that in some way or other it seemed to have grown a little too large for me, and showed a tendency to settle down over my ears. I have nevertheless comforted myself with the thought that sometimes the difference between half-wittedness and genius is so slight to the eye of the familiar beholder that wise men are not infrequently believed by their neighbors to be fools. My young friend after all may have been a poet, and, like some prophets, "without honor in his own country."
In the days of my cynicism I used to laugh in my sleeve, and occasionally in print, at the ways of the politicians and statesmen en route, who have their pictures taken hobnobbing with locomotive engineers, trainmen, and Pullman porters. Since I have myself become a professional wanderer and have come into closer, somewhat enforced, fellowship with these individuals I laugh at the politicians and statesmen no more. On the contrary I commend them, and I think with appreciation and gratitude of a poem by George Sterling, one of our real voices to-day calling down blessings on the heads of these "workers of the night" to whose watchful care we who travel intrust our lives.
One who makes only occasional journeys by rail is not likely to think very much about the man at the throttle; but when one has practicallylived on the rail for two or three months running, not only the man at the throttle, but the man at the switch, the flagman, the fireman, the conductor, and the Pullman porter as well, come to be in a very real sense members of his family.
Mr. Carnegie's hero medals are often bestowed, and worthily, upon men who on sudden impulse have performed some deed of heroism and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others; but I have yet to hear of one of these desirable possessions being bestowed upon the flagman who, in the face of a raging blizzard, at midnight, the thermometer at zero, leaves the comparative comfort of the rear car, and walks, whistling for company, back some four or five hundred yards along the icy track, and stands there with his red lantern in hand to warn a possibly advancing train behind of danger ahead.
When the ice-incased wires are down, and the signal and switch towers are out of commission because of the rampageous elements, how many of us who lie comfortably asleep in the warm berths of our stalled trains give so much as a thought to the man outside in the freezing cold of the night,keeping the switches clear that we may proceed, or to the flagman at the rear, shelterless before the storm, who stands between us and disaster? Most of us, I fancy, do not think of them at all, and I fear that many of us so occupy ourselves with self-sympathy on these occasions that we find no words of commendation in our hearts for anybody connected with the whole railway system; but rather words of condemnation for that system and everybody connected with it, from the innocent stockholder looking for dividends, all the way down to those poor devils who have forgotten under the stress of demoralizing conditions to fill the water tanks that we may drink and get our fair share of the nation's supply of typhoid germs.
For myself, I can truthfully say that the remark of a railway official made to me many years ago in response to one of my complaints has of late years gathered considerable force and significance. This gentleman was a neighbor of mine, and one Christmas he presented me with an annual pass on the Hudson River Railroad. It was a delightful gift, and I used it with enthusiasm. One morning, however, as he and I sat together ona local train that had in some mysterious way managed to lose four hours on a thirty-minute run, I turned to him and said:
"Charlie, sometimes I wish I had never accepted that confounded old pass of yours. I've bartered my freedom of speech for a beggarly account of empty minutes. If it wasn't for that blankety-blank pass, I could tell you what I think of your blinkety-blink old road. Here we are four hours late on a thirty-minute run!"
"Why, my dear boy," he replied with an amiable smile, "you are dingety-dinged lucky to get in at all!"
Individually I have experienced so much kindliness and courtesy at the hands of the personnel of our railroads in all parts of the United States that I sometimes get real satisfaction out of sharing with them the discomforts of travel. I have discovered without half trying that there are profound depths of friendliness in them which need to be given only half a chance to manifest themselves. Rarely indeed have I met with discourtesy at their hands, and many a weary hour has been cheered by their native wit. For the most part, naturally, my contact has been with thestation agent and the conductor—and the Pullman porter.
While I deplore the abuses of tipping in this and other countries, I have rarely grudged the Pullman porter his well earned extra quarter. Perhaps the general run of us have not had the time, nor the inclination, to acquaint ourselves with the difficulties of the Pullman porter's job. We don't realize that with a car full of people ten passengers will want the car cooled off, ten others will want a little more heat, five will complain that there is too much air, five others will complain that there is too little; and poor Rastus, ground between the two millstones of complaint, has to make a show of pleasing everybody. He above all others would be justified in announcing as his favorite poem those fine old lines:
As a rule a man's a fool:When it's hot he wants it cool;When it's cool he wants it hot—Always wanting what is not.
I recall one fine old darky once on a train running into Cleveland, who was very unhappy over a complaint of mine that, with a car crowded tothe limit with women and children, some cigarette fiend had vitiated what little air there was in the car by smoking in his berth. I was awakened at three o'clock in the morning by the oppressive odor of burning paper and near-perique. There is no mistaking the origin of that aromatic nuisance, and my gorge rose at the boorish lack of consideration that the smoker showed for the comfort and convenience of his fellow travelers. I pressed the button alongside my berth, and a moment later the porter was peering in at me through the curtains.
"Look here, John," said I in a stage whisper, "this is a little too much! Somebody in this car is smoking cigarettes, and I think it's a condemned outrage. With all these ladies on board it seems to me that you ought to insist that the man who can't restrain his passion for cigarettes should get off at the next stop and take the first cattle car he finds running to where he thinks he is going."
"Yas, suh," returned the porter sadly. "It's too bad, suh, an' I've tried my bes' to stop 'em twice, suh."
"Well, by George!" said I, sitting up. "Ifthey won't stop for you, maybe they will for me. If any man aboard this car thinks he can get away with a nuisance like this—"
"Yas, suh," said the porter; "but that's jest whar de trouble comes in, suh. I been after 'em, suh; but it ain't no use. In bofe cases, suh, it was de ladies deirsefs dat was a-doin' all de smokin', suh."
And he grinned so broadly as I threw myself back on my pillow that when I finally got to sleep again I dreamed of the opening to the Mammoth Cave, through a natural association of ideas.