X

"When he got through I could have qualified for a college degree on the subject of straw hats.""When he got through I could have qualified for a college degree on the subject of straw hats."

"Come around to the lecture hall with me to-night and I'll show you," said I.

He threw his head back and roared with laughter. "By George! the dinner's on me!" he said.

He accompanied me to the hall that evening, and sitting in the front row gazed at me quizzically all through my labors—full of sympathy and understanding, however—and after the affair was over and he joined me for my return journey to the hotel he slapped me hard on the back.

"Some gas, all right!" said he. "I wouldn't blow that out if I could!"

Which I took to be one of the most genuine compliments I have ever received.

I have never in any of my trips felt myself in danger of assassination, and yet one of these chance acquaintances of mine involved me by his love of practical joking in an implied ultimatum from a stranger of a most awe-inspiring nature. In leaving a California city some years ago I found myself seated with a group of other travelers just inside the rear door of the observation car. The train had come to a sudden standstill alongside a row of flourishing olive trees, and the traveling man (if I remember correctly he was to Suspenders what Darwin was to the Origin of Species) jumped from the platform and plucked a handful of theirfruit from branches overhanging the border of the road. Three of these he passed in to me, and in the innocence of my young heart I immediately plumped one of them into my mouth, and bit into it.

The result I shall not attempt to describe. Our dictionaries have at least a dozen separate and distinct terms signifying that which is bitter, no single one of which is adequate even to intimate the taste of that olive. There are such expressions as "gall and wormwood"; there are adjectives involving such qualifications of taste as "acrid," "nauseous," "sharp," "tangy," "stinging," "rough," and "gamy." None suffices. I have tasted rue, I have tasted aloes, I have tasted quassia, and I have nearly died of squills. As a small boy I once started in to chew a four-grain quinine pill that had been rolled with no ameliorating ingredient to take off the tang of it. But never in my life before or since have I tasted anything comparable to that olive for pure, unadulterated acerbity. It was an Ossa of Gall piled on a Pelion of Wormwood—I might say that it represented the complete reunion of that Gall which the historians of the past have told uswas "divided into three parts"—and I suffered accordingly.

But when I saw that traveling man's eye full of twinkling joy fixed upon me I resolved not to let him know that the horrid thing was not the most exquisite bit of ambrosial sweetness that had ever been perpetrated upon my paralyzed palate. I simply chewed quietly ahead, externally as calm and as placid as any cow that ever fletcherized her cud.

"How is it?" asked another traveler, sitting alongside me.

"Delicious!" said I. "Have one."

And I handed him over one of my two remaining olives. He was as innocent as I, but not quite so self-controlled. Even as I had done, he too plumped the olive into his mouth, bit into it—and forthwith exploded. I shall not repeat here the appeal to Heaven that issued from his lips along with the offending olive itself. Suffice it to say that although there were several ladies present it was verbally adequate. And then out of the depths of the car, from a physical giant lolling at ease in a plush-covered arm chair, came a deep, basso-profundo voice.

"I'd kill any man who did that to me!" it said, with a vicious aspirate at the beginning of the word kill.

But there was no murder done, and before night as our train rolled over into Nevada we were as happy a family as one will be likely to find under any kind of roof in the far-off days of the millennium.

It is not often that we look for fine literary and other distinctions in the minds of men engaged in the humbler pursuits of life, and yet from two of my chance acquaintances en route, both barbers, I have gathered subtleties of line that have remained with me impressively ever since. The first of these worthy toilers and subconscious philosophers I discovered in a Chicago hotel in 1905. I was on my way into Iowa for a week of one-night stands, having come almost directly from one of the most delightful of my literary opportunities—Colonel George Harvey's dinner in honor of Mark Twain's seventieth birthday.

The stains of travel needed to be removed, and I sought the aid of the hero of my tale, a stocky little chap, whose face suggested an ancestry part Spanish and part East Side New York. I will saythat judged externally I should not have cared to meet him in a dark alley after midnight; but inwardly he turned out to be a pretty good sort of fellow. His speech was pure vernacular.

As he was cutting my hair I glanced over the supplement to that week's issue of "Harper's Weekly," at that time under Harvey's control, devoted to a full account of the Mark Twain dinner both in picture and in text. In turning over the leaves to see what kind of melon-shaped head the flashlight photographer had given me I came upon the counterfeit presentment of the group of which I had been a member, and was relieved to find that the print had treated me fairly well, and that instead of looking like a cross between a professional gambler and a train robber, as most of my published portraits have made me appear, the thing was recognizable, and in certain unsuspecting quarters might enable me to pass as a reputable citizen. The snipping of the scissors back of my ear suddenly ceased as I gazed upon my alleged "liniments"—as an old friend of mine used to call them—and the barber's voice broke the stillness.

"Say," he said, pointing with the scissors pointto the portrait of myself, "that guy looks sump'n like you, don't he?"

"He ought to," said I. "Me and him's the same guy."

"Well whaddyer know about that!" he ejaculated. "Really?"

"Yep," said I.

"And you're from New York, eh?" he went on, resuming his labors. "What's the name?"

I enlightened him, and received the inevitable question.

"Whaddyer think of Chicago?"

It had happened that every visit I had made to Chicago for several years had shown that city almost completely hidden beneath a pall of sooty cloud and lake fog; so I answered him accordingly.

"Why, I like Chicago very much," said I, "very much indeed; but there is room for improvement here, of course. For instance, Chicago is dark, and gloomy, and cold. Now over in New York," I added, "we have a little round, yellow ball that is hauled up into the sky out of the wilds of Long Island every morning, and it is so arranged that it moves in a perfect semicircle through the sky at the rate of about sixty seconds a minute. It is awonderful invention. It sheds light on everything, on everybody, and sort of warms things up for us, and unlike most things in New York it doesn't cost anybody a cent. Best of all, when the day is over, and we want things darkened up a bit so that we can go to sleep, the little ball sinks out of sight over on the western side of the city."

"Aw go wan!" he put in. "I know what you mean—you mean the sun."

"Yes," said I; "that's just what we call it. You've evidently heard of it before—but why don't you have something of the kind out here?"

His reply was a mixture of a snort and a sniff.

I then went on my journey into Iowa, and at the end of about ten days was back in Chicago once more, and in need of further renovation I again sought the assistance of my tonsorial friend. After a cordial greeting he said:

"Say—I told my wife how I'd fixed you up the other day, andshe'd heard of you before. You wrote a book called 'Tea and Coffee' once, didn't cha?"

"Something like that," I replied. "It was called 'Coffee and Repartee.'"

"Well, anyhow, whatever the thing was called, she'd read it," said the barber.

"I have met two other people who have done the same thing and lived; so don't worry," I observed.

"Whaddyer suppose she ast me?" he queried.

"I give it up," said I. "What?"

"She ast me," said he, "was you so very comical, and I told her no,he ain't so damned comical, but he's a hell of a kidder!"

I may be wrong, but it has ever since seemed to me that there was a particularly nice distinction involved in this spontaneous estimate of my character, and it may be that a great many of our American humorists, so called, would be more aptly described askidders. Our guying propensities, and the tongue-in-the-cheek style of humor so prevalent to-day, suggest the thought anyhow that the termkidderis more discriminating than that ofhumorist, as signifying the qualities of a Cervantes, a Rabelais, a Swift, or a Mark Twain.

It was in a South Carolina barber shop that the second nicety came unexpectedly upon me. I had looked for a certain quaint philosophy and humor among the negroes of the South, and must confess to considerable disappointment in not finding muchof it. The picturesque article in the African line that has so delighted us in the fiction of our masters of the pen from the South seems either to have vanished completely from the face of the earth or to be a trifle shy in the revelation of itself to outsiders. At any rate I found little of it in my wanderings in that territory; although a somewhat disagreeable amount of self-conscious quaintness, "for revenue only," was not wanting among negroes encountered.

"She ast me was you so very comical," said he."She ast me was you so very comical," said he.

But this white barber, an anemic little man, whose lazy drawl and languid manner bespoke anything but independence of spirit, and in whose presence I instinctively thought of the term "white trash," gave me in full measure what I had looked for in the sons of Ham. After sitting in his chairfor a few minutes I mentioned casually that South Carolina had a "fine Governor," referring to an individual named Blease, who at that time, occupied the high seat at Columbia, and of whose gyroscopic talents I had yet to find a South Carolinian of standing who was proud.

"I ain't got no use fo'MistuhBlease, suh," the man replied, stroking his razor up and down the strop with a vigor entirely out of keeping with his presumed character. If I had been a blind man, I should have felt sure he was a negro, such was his accent.

"I am sorry to hear that," said I. "It would be pleasant to find somebody in the State who has some use for him; but so far it all seems to be the other way."

"No, suh, I ain't got no use fo' him, suh," continued the barber. "I don't like his kind, suh. I have shavedMistuhBlease many a time, suh, an' when he was runnin' fo' Governah he came in hyere most every day, suh. One mornin' I says to him, 'Mistuh Blease,' says I, 'you'd ought to be a mighty proud man, suh, runnin' fo' Governah of South Cyarolina, suh, an' sure to git it. That's an honah, suh,' I says, 'fo' yo' and yo' childrenand yo' children's children to be proud of.' And what do you suppose he answered, suh? 'To Blank with the honah!' says he. 'What the blank do yo' suppose I caiah fo' the honah?'

"And I've nuvver give him the honah, suh; no, suh.Mis-tuh Blease done got elected, and I've shaved him twenty times since, suh;but he's nuvver had the honah from me, suh. I've nuvver called him Governah yit, suh; but it's been Mistuh Blease every time, suh!"

It was when I was recovering from this loyal assertion of the little man's respect for the Commonwealth of his birth that the stillness of the shop was broken by the excited voice of a tall, lantern-jawed individual with a distinct type of accent, who came rushing in from the street.

"Anybody round hyah knows what it costs to beat up a niggah in this hyah State?" he cried.

I gasped, and the barber paused languidly in his ministrations, holding his razor poised like the sword of Damocles over my head, while he reflected.

"Why," said he, "I dunno aigsactly; but the las' time the co'hts decided the question I think it was ten dollahs, suh."

"All right," said the intruder, starting to thedoor. "If it don't come to no moh'n ten dollahs, I'll do it. Up home in Ferginia, where I come from, it never costs moh'n five; but I'm willin' to go as high as fifteen. A coon down hyah at my bohdin' house done give my wife some back talk this mornin',an if it don't cost moh'n fifteen dollahs I'm gwine to throw the critter outen de winder!"

It appears to be the habit of every age to lament its own dearth of humor, and in our own time we have not been exempt from the charge that we have no humorists. It is my own candid opinion in respect to this matter that we are confronted by a paradox in that we have so many humorists that in effect we seem to have none; so much of humor that in the very surfeit of it its brilliance does not appear; in short, that because of the trees we cannot see the wood.

A period that has produced a Dooley, and an Ade, and an Irvin Cobb, and a Bert Leston Taylor, is surely not poor in humorous possessions of a scintillating character, whether we demand that our humor shall be a product of pure fun or of profoundly serious thinking. J. Montgomery Flagg in picture and in text is as much a master of effervescent foolery as ever was either JohnPhœnix or Artemas Ward; and in the humor that is designed to interpret life itself I find an endless store of it in the works of Wallace Irwin, of Montague Glass, of Miss Edna Ferber, and of Mrs. Alice Regan Rice; the last two, by the way, forming a complete refutation of the preposterous notion that women are devoid of the sentiment that cheers but does not inebriate. And as for the wits, if Oliver Herford were as lonely among wits as he is unique, I should still feel that we were rich beyond measure in that form of humor which is for the most part intellectual, of the mind rather than of the emotions.

But even if the charge were true—which of course it is not—that we no longer have any purveyors of humor of the first class upon whom we may rely for a service as regular as is our supply of milk, butter, and eggs, we could still lay the flattering unction to our souls that American life is full of humor. If any one doubts the fact, let him throw himself headlong into the Lyceum Seas and find out from personal contact. To me it seems to crop up everywhere, and whether I travel north, south, east, or west I find it in great abundance—humor conscious, and humor unconscious;humor of the mind, and humor of the heart, or pathos; humor of situation, and the humor involving a mere play upon words; humor in all its infinitely varied qualities, and of a character most appealing. Writing a short while ago of an alleged similar condition in another field of letters, that of lyric poetry, I permitted myself the following rather sentimental reflections:

No singers great are here to-day?Perhaps! Let the indictment stand.I hear no strong voice on the way,No lilt from some immortal hand;And yet as on the silver mereI float, and towering hillsides scan,Deep in my heart I seem to hearAgain the merry pipes of Pan.No lyrics worthy of the nameAre sung to-day by living men?Perhaps! Yet naught is there of shameThat we have not old Herrick's pen,For as I wander 'neath these skiesAs fairly blue as skies can beAnd gaze into two special eyes,All life a lyric is to me.

With equal truth and sincerity I could say much the same in respect to humor, and indeed I might properly even go further. I could not perhaps say that all Americans, or even many Americans,are lyrists; but I should not fall far short of the mark were I to say that most Americans are humorists. In my travels I come across occasional "nonconductors," as a clever woman of my acquaintance once called a certain social light who was as impervious to wit as is the rhinoceros to the sting of a gnat; but they are few and far between. For the most part I have found natural born humorists on nearly every bush.

In a previous chapter I have confessed to some disappointment in the quality of the humor of the negro as I have encountered it in Southern climes; but there have been, nevertheless, delightful rifts in that cloud. I recall an aged son of Ethiopia who called for me one wintry morning at four o'clock to drive me from my hotel at Greenville, South Carolina, to the railway station. He was a ragged old fellow, and with his snowy, wool-covered head composed a study in black and white worthy of the brush of any of our best limners of character. He was as communicative as he was ragged, and confided to me at the very beginning of our acquaintance that he had moved away from Charleston to become a resident of Greenville because down in Charleston he couldn't eat "pohk"(which I took to be pork) without having to take to his bed; while in the more salubrious climate of Greenville he could "swaller a whole ham at a settin', an' nebber hyear a woid from dat old ham forebber after." His name, he told me, was "mos' gin'rally George"; but he "warn't biggetty" about what people called him, since he was willin' to come "ef dey on'y jes' whistled."

The early morning hours were cold and dreary, and I found my fur-lined horse blanket, as I have come to call my faithful winter overcoat, none too warm. Noting George's rather inadequate provision against the chill winds, I advised him to wrap his dilapidated old lap-robe about his shoulders.

"Ah'm all right, Boss," he replied. "Don't yo' worry erbout me. Dis yere old obercoat o' mine ain't much to look at; but hit's on de job jes' de same." He gave a most amusing chuckle. "Yo'd ought to hyear mah fambly takin' on erbout dis yere old obercoat!" he said. "Dey's kind o' proudy folks, an' dey don't like it. Dey says hit don't look neat; but Ah tell 'um Ah'm a gwine t' wear hit jes' de same, neat er no neat—de undahtakah, he mek yo' look neat!"

From which I deduced that George was not only a humorist, but in a fair way to qualify as a philosopher as well.

Two days later I happened to be at Atlanta, Georgia, over Lincoln's Birthday, and it pleased me beyond measure to find printed on the first page of one of the prominent daily newspapers of that beautiful city a three-column cut of Abraham Lincoln, with a suitable tribute in verse from one of America's leading syndicate poets. I had myself for reasons of taste, and in order to give no offense to my kindly hosts throughout the Southland, omitted from my discourse passing references to certain great figures of the Civil War; but on seeing this very notable recognition by his old-time adversaries of the great virtues of our martyred President, I hesitated no longer in respect to these references, and from that time on reverted to the original form of my talk.

After eating my breakfast on this morning of the eleventh I dallied for awhile in the office of the massive Georgian Terrace Hotel, smoking my cigar, and glancing over the news in the paper. As I was about to toss the paper aside a fine old type of your Southern gentleman seated himselfon the divan alongside of me, and in the usual courteous fashion of the country gave me a morning salutation. I responded in kind, and then tapping my paper observed:

"That is a fine picture of Lincoln."

"Yes, suh, a verruh fine picture, suh," he replied. "I never had the honah of seein' Mistuh Lincoln, suh; but from all I hyear, suh, he must have resembled that picture pretty close, suh."

"It is a delight to me to find it in one of your Southern newspapers," said I, "especially in one so influential in the South as this."

"Yes, suh," he answered. "It shows that the South is not slow to recognize genius, suh, wherever it is found, suh. But," he added, "there is no occasion for surprise, suh. We have always appreciated Mr. Lincoln's greatness down hyear, and we have admiahed him, suh;though we have had reason to believe that durin' the late onpleasantness, suh, he was consid'rable of a No'thern sympathizah, suh."

Conspicuous in my memory for both his conscious wit and his unconscious humor is a strapping negro I encountered at a junction down in Alabama last winter. I was marooned there forfive weary hours, receiving at the hands of its natives as high a courtesy and as fearful food as I have ever yet had presented to me. The colored porter at the hotel had a face as black as the ace of spades, and as childlike and bland as it was black. He seemed to take a tremendous interest in me, especially in my fur overcoat, which he appeared to think must "ha cost as much as eight dollahs," and he plied me with questions as we stood on the railway platform waiting for my train into Birmingham for a full hour that nearly drove me to despair. I have not space for that illuminating interchange of ideas in all its verbal fullness; but part of it ran in this wise:

"Whar yo' come from?"

"Maine," said I.

"Maine?" he repeated. "What's Maine?"

"Why, Maine—Maine is a State," said I. "And it's a nice one too," I added.

"Oh, yaas," he said. "Hit's ober yander, ain't it?" he continued, with a wave of his hand sweeping enough to take in the whole universe.

"Yes," said I, "away over yonder. It's down East."

"Got any children?" he queried.

"Yes," said I, "I've got two sons in Detroit, and—"

"Dee-troit, eh?" he interrupted. "Yaas, suh, Ah've heerd o' Dee-troit. Dee-troit's a nice State too—a mighty nice State—a nice State to have two sons at, Ah reckon. So yo' was born in Dee-troit, was yuh?"

"No," I replied, "I wasn't born at Detroit; I was born at Yonkers—"

"O-o-oh! So yo' was born at Yonkers, was yuh? Yaas, suh—Yonkers! Ah don't know much erbout Yonkers; but Ah guess Yonkers is a nice State too, ain't it?"

"Well," I laughed, "yes—Yonkers is a pretty nice State too—what you might call a Comatose State; but—"

"Yaas, suh—Ah've heern tell dat Yonkers was one o' dem cummytoe States, an' Ah guess dat's a pretty good kind ob a State to be bohn in. What yo' sellin'?" This with a hasty glance at my suitcase.

"Brains," said I.

"Lawsy me! Sellin' brains, eh?" said he. "Waal, suh, Ah'm sorry. Yo' look so kind o' set up Ah thought yo' was a-sellin' seegyars.Yaas, suh—Ah'd hoped yo' was." He gazed wistfully along the shining rails. "Dem seegyar drummahs is mighty free wid deir samples, suh," he continued, "and Ah been a hopin' yo'd be able to spar' me a han'ful like de res' ob 'em does. But ef yo're dealin' in brains, hit ain'tlikely yo' got enough to gib any away."

I may add that his disappointment was short-lived; for before we parted I took him across to the general store that fronted on the railroad track, and by the judicious expenditure of a quarter bought him a supply of his favorite brand large enough to last him a week. A single one of them would have done for me forever.

Repartee has always been a characteristic gift of the American people, due no doubt to a political system that turns almost every community into a debating society at least once a year, and sometimes oftener. Readiness of verbal retort has thereby become an inheritance that grows richer in the squandering of it. It has been a quality so conspicuous that it has led a great many people, justly or otherwise, to assert that there are more really good jokes to be found in the course of a year in the columns of the "Congressional Record"than in the cleverest of the world's comic papers. However this may be, I know that one of the zestful things about a lecturer's life is the jestful thing that lurks at his side almost everywhere he turns.

I have had many proofs of this in my own wanderings; some direct, and some at long range. An amusing instance of the long-range retort occurred some years ago when I found in my mail one morning a letter from a gentleman living in Wyoming, an entire stranger to me, who said that he had heard from a friend that I wrote after-dinner speeches for others as part of my professional work.

Somehow or other [he continued] I have managed to get a reputation as a wit which I don't deserve; but I've got to live up to it, or go under. Now it has occurred to me that since you are in the business of writing after-dinner speeches for others you might turn out three crackajacks for me.

"If yo're dealin' in brains, hit ain't likely yo' got enough to gib any away.""If yo're dealin' in brains, hit ain't likely yo' got enough to gib any away."

So, without beating about the bush any longer, I want to ask you what you would charge me for three ripsnorters lasting about a half an hour each, speaking at the rate of a hundred and fifty words a minute, on the subjects of "Our Glorious Commonwealth," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and "The Ladies." If your terms are not too high, I shall be glad to give you the order.

I cannot say whether my sensations upon reading this delightful communication were more of amazement or of amusement, but after due deliberation I decided to answer the letter in a facetious spirit.

I have your esteemed favor of Thursday last [I wrote], and beg to say that my regular charge for a single speech such as you require, suitable for delivery before a mixed gathering of ladies and gentlemen, has invariably been $1,000 in the past; but since your proposition is more or less on a wholesale basis, and business is slack, I will make an exception in your case and give you the special terms of $750 per,F. O. B.I must insist, however, that you regard these terms as strictly confidential; for it might involve me in serious complications if Mr. Choate, and Gen. Horace Porter, and Senator Blank were to learn that I was cutting rates. They have been among my best customers for many years, and for their own sakes, as well as for my own, I do not wish to lose their trade.

This letter, which I felt tolerably sure would end the matter once and for all, was mailed, and within a week brought me the following telegraphic response:

If you write Senator Blank's speeches, I don't want one from you at any price.

It added not a little to the poignancy of this retort that the telegram was sent "collect."

Another example of ready American facetiousness cheered a dull day for me last year in Tennessee. I was booked to lecture before a charming collegiate community at Blue Mountain, Mississippi, and to get there from Memphis was required to make a railway connection at a curious little town called Middleton. Middleton was an amazing concoction of piccaninnies, waste paper, inactive whites, and germ suggestion. Mr. Goldberg, the cartoonist, would probably have referred to it if he had been along with me as the town that put the Junk in Junction, and upon its dilapidated railway platform I was compelled to wait for six mortal hours, hungry and thirsty, but fearing to assuage the one or quench the other for fear of internal complications beyond the reach of medical science. If I had never believed in the hookworm before, I became an abject coward in the fear of it then.

Middleton's chief excuse for being appeared to be that it was the terminus of a featherbed affaircalled the New Orleans, Mobile & Chicago Railway, possibly in ironic reference to the fact that as far as I could learn it did not touch any point within two hundred miles of any one of those cities. I imagine that the mileage of the New Orleans, Mobile & Chicago Railway, or at least that particular section of it, was somewhere between thirty-seven and thirty-eight miles linear measure; though in the matter of jolting, careening, sliding, skidding, and galumphing along generally, its emotional mileage was incalculable, and the effect of a ride from Middleton at one end to New Albany at the other on the liver surpassed that of all the great transcontinental systems rolled into one.

From what I could gather in casual conversation with such bureaus of information as were available at Middleton its trains ran anywhere from twenty-seven hours to a year and six months late. I will say on behalf of its management, however, that after trying it once I concluded that it was a miracle it ran at all. Three or four times in the course of my waiting I decided to give up the quest of Blue Mountain altogether and to return to Memphis; but hope has always sprung eternal in my breast, and each resolution to quit thegame was superseded by some kind of optimistic spiritual reassurance that held me true to my obligations.

Ultimately my optimism was justified, and a panting little combination of whirring wheels and iron rust wheezed into view, dragging a passenger car of I should say the vintage of 1852, and a shamefully big and modern freight car after it. A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Locomotives would have had everybody connected with the institution indicted then and there, and I was again strongly inclined to give up my effort to get through. It seemed the very height of inhumanity to ask that poor little engine to carry my added weight. I should have much preferred to lift it tenderly in my arms from the track, and put it into the freight car, and pull the train to Blue Mountain myself; at any rate, that seemed the most reasonable and the only really kind thing to do at the moment.

Nevertheless I boarded the train, having first invested fifty cents in twenty-fours' worth of postal card accident insurance at the ticket office window and mailed it to my executors. In a couple of hours we were sliding and bumping down gradethrough an oozy morass over tracks ballasted with something having the consistency of oatmeal mush liberally diluted with skim milk. We slid over the first half-mile in about fifteen seconds, thanks to the weight of that shameless freight car at the rear, which pushed the rest of us along at a terrific rate of speed; but things were averaged up when we came to an upgrade, which, on a rough estimate, I should say we accomplished at the rate of about a mile a week. After awhile the conductor appeared—a nice, genial, kindly soul, who inspired me with a confidence I had not yet managed to acquire in the road itself. He was so smiling and serenely unaffected by what loomed dark as dangers to me that I was soon feeling rather ashamed of myself for being so full of coward fears, and it was not long before in my mind I was singing those beautiful lines of Browning:

The year's at the spring,And day's at the morn;Morning's at seven;The hillside's dew-pearled;The lark's on the wing;The snail's on the thorn;God's in his heaven—All's right with the world!

And as I was humming this comforting assuranceto myself there broke upon the silence of the car the following colloquy:

"Howdy, Sam!" this from a fellow traveler sprawled comfortably in the seat just back of me.

"A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Locomotives would have had them indicted then and there.""A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Locomotives would have had them indicted then and there."

"Howdy, Jim!" this from the smiling conductor.

"How long you been with this hyere road, Sam?" asked the fellow traveler.

"Seven years last March, Jim," replied the conductor.

"My Gord, Sam!" cried the fellow traveler,sitting up. "This must be your second trip!"

As for subtle humor of a rather sly sort, perhaps the best example I know of was a little jest perpetrated at the expense of one to whom I shall refer as my Only Muse, who, I rejoice to say, accompanies me upon most of my trips. She was with me once in Iowa when we were stranded at an interesting little railway crossing for several hours. The place consisted wholly of some stock-yards, a general store, and a small wooden cot which passed for a hotel, in which we found every comfort that courtesy could provide, even if some of the rather material necessities of life were lacking.

We took dinner at the hotel. Seated opposite us at table were two farmers, one a handsome middle-aged man, and the other a man wizened and gray, with a weather-beaten face, and a kindly eye; seventy years old, I imagine, but still as active and as interested in life as a boy, as all Iowans, irrespective of foolish years, seem to be. One or two little courtesies of the table started an acquaintance, and naturally enough I was asked my business in the State.

"Oh, I am out here lecturing," I said."Well, we're farmers," said the old man.

Now the Only Muse takes a great interest in farming. She raises herself most of the vegetables we consume at home, and one of my ambitions has always been to set her up as the presiding Deity over a real farm some day when the lure of the platform no longer operates to drag me off into distant scenes. She had taken a course of lectures on farming at Columbia University, and was enthusiastically full of the subject at the time. Wherefore it happened that when my vis-à-vis announced that he was a farmer it was the best kind of opening for the conversational powers of the Only Muse—which to say the least are generally adequate—and she made the most of it. She talked of apples, corn, cows, and bees. She dilated eloquently upon the value of persistent "cultivation," and as I sat listening admiringly to her evidently masterful handling of her varied subjects I suddenly became conscious of the old man's eye twinkling across the table at me, and then, as the Only Muse paused to catch her breath for further disquisition, he leaned forward, and with seemingly innocent curiosity asked:

"Which one o' ye does the lecturin'?"

I trust that the outburst of merriment that greeted his query conveyed to his mind with perfect clarity the fact that there are no professional jealousies in my household.

At any rate this, with the wonderfully witty response of a distinguished railway president to certain reflections I had made in an after-dinner speech on his road, appeals to me as one of the most delicately subtle bits of wit I have encountered anywhere in real life—which life on the road undoubtedly is.

That the reader may judge for himself if the railway president was wittier than the Iowa farmer or not, I will close this chapter with a short narration of that incident.

The gentleman in question was Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore & Ohio, who on an occasion in New York listened courteously to some facetious observations I had to make on the subject of the wonders of the B. & O., and two days later heaped coals of fire upon my head by sending me by mail a pass over his railroad. I was of course delighted; but before using it decided to read carefully the "conditions and limitations named on the reverse side," under which it was issued.I turned the treasure over and read the following:

This pass will be accepted for transportation WHEN ACCOMPANIED BY CERTIFICATE of Company's Agent, attested by office-stamp, that the bearer has presented evidence of being HOPELESSLY INDIGENT, DESTITUTE, AND HOMELESS, or an INMATE OF A CHARITABLE OR ELEEMOSYNARY INSTITUTION, a SOLDIER or SAILOR about to enter either a NATIONAL HOME or "A HOUSE BOAT ON THE STYX," or otherwise qualified as entitled to free transportation under Federal or State Laws.

I do not remember whether or not I ever thanked Mr. Willard for this courtesy; but if I did not I do so now, and beg to assure him that I would not exchange that little document to-day for a controlling interest in his road. I am not much of a business man, but I have a keen sense of relative values.

Whoe'er has traveled life's dull round,Where'er his stages may have been,May sigh to think he still has foundThe warmest welcome at an inn.

So wrote William Shenstone, a minor poet of England in those brilliant days that produced Addison, and Swift, and Richard Steele, and our own great philosopher and humorist Benjamin Franklin. I used formerly to sympathize deeply with the poet's sentiment, so charmingly expressed, and in a certain way I do so still; but in the last decade, involving so much wandering, and so many inns of varied degrees of excellence, I have found that my sympathy with Shenstone's thought has undergone considerable modification. I should indeed sigh to think that I had found my warmest welcome at an inn; but I should hesitate to indorse any sentiment that would seem to underestimate the value of the whole-souled, genialcharacter of Mine Host, as I have encountered him in all parts of the United States.

While I cannot truthfully say that I think we Americans have a genius for hotel management, such as our cousins of Switzerland, for instance, appear to have, I can at least say that I believe we have a natural aptitude for a peculiarly delightful kind of spontaneous hospitality, of which I have been for years the grateful beneficiary. If a hotel were a thing of the spirit solely, I should say that the hostelries of the United States, taking them by and large, approximate perfection; but unfortunately one cannot impart tenderness to a steak with cordial smiles, freshness to an egg with a twinkling eye, or the essential properties of coffee to a boiled bean with a pleasant word; and if in the South and Middle West it were possible to sweep a room clean with a welcoming wave of the hand, and to set a mobilized entomology in full retreat with the fervor of an advance in friendliness, I should not think so often, perhaps, upon the possible duties of local Boards of Health in respect to the American hotel situation.

I hasten to add, however, that this situation, hopeless as it at times appears to be, brings forciblyto my mind that ancient chestnut set forth in the sign in the Far Western church—

DON'T SHOOT THE ORGANIST:HE IS DOING THE BEST HE CAN—

for I verily believe that in nine cases out of ten the landlords of the nation are in point of fact doing the "best they can," and in many instances in the face of heart-breaking discouragement. They are themselves quite aware of their deficiencies, as was once clearly established in the inscription I saw in front of an Oklahoma caravansary as I passed through on the Katy-Flyer, to the following effect:

THE SALT AND TOOTHPICKS SERVED AT THESAINT JAMES ARE AS GOOD AS THOSEAT ANY HOTEL IN AMERICA

Our American communities, unfortunately, have not yet awakened to the economic fact that a good hotel is about as valuable an asset as a town can have. An enterprise that might very properly, and for the general good, be subsidized by the Board of Trade, or even by the town itself, is left to private initiative; usually with barren, if not bankrupting, results.

New England is slowly awakening to this need,and within the last few years a number of fine hostelries have been established, with the backing of real civic interest, and under trained management; but very few of even the most progressive Western and Southern Communities seem as yet to have taken so vital a matter into consideration. They have good will and courtesy enough among them to run a thousand highly acceptable caravansaries, and I have sometimes wished that some of their individual qualities might in some way be engrafted upon our more sumptuous Eastern hotels, where one is able to get anything one is willing to pay for, except the feeling that somebody somewhere in the hotel is glad he came.

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