"If it were possible to sweep a room clean with a welcoming wave of the hand—""If it were possible to sweep a room clean with a welcoming wave of the hand—"
I do not know how many thousand librarybuildings our great Ironmaster has caused to be built in this country—and we who write books have cause to be grateful to him for having provided such rarely beautiful mausoleums for the final interment of our cherished productions—but I have often wished that his generous pursestrings had been loosened on behalf of hospitality, rather than exclusively for the perpetuation of current fiction and books of reference that nobody ever uses. Before the trusts are finally curbed I hope that one or two more swollen fortunes may be produced, and that the owners thereof may be inspired to carry the light of living into communities in need of something of the sort, by building hotels for them, in which clean rooms suitably aired, and good food properly cooked, may be provided for those who have to travel, and are so constituted that they cannot eat poetry, nor sleep comfortably between the sheets of the lamented William James's incursions into pragmatic philosophy, dry as they unquestionably are.
How next to impossible it is for our good landlords in certain sections of the land to conduct their business profitably was once brought to my attention by a little incident in a town not manyleagues from Atlanta, Georgia. I found myself seated one evening at table opposite a traveling man of most marvelous gastronomic fortitude. For his supper he ordered cereal and cream, two fried eggs "done on both sides," some bacon, "a little of that steak," German fried potatoes, some baked beans, a bit of kippered herring, milk toast, preserved peaches, hot biscuit, sponge cake, and a cup of coffee. After the commissariat had responded faithfully, and the table had been duly decorated with the serried ranks of "bird-bath" dishes containing the bulk of the enumerated edibles, a third party arrived, and an old friendship between himself and my vis-à-vis was renewed.
"Well, Tommy, old man, it's ninety-seven moons since I saw you last! How's things?" said the newcomer.
"Oh—pretty good," said my vis-à-vis wearily. "Business is good enough; but Iain't feelin' very well myself."
"What's the trouble—caught cold?" asked the newcomer.
"No," said the other. "I'm just feelin' sort o' mean—my stummick don't seem just right. I guess I been workin' too hard."
"You'd ought to eat milk toast," said the new arrival.
"Yes," said Tommy. "I've ordered some."
At this point the waitress came up for the newcomer's order.
"I'm too tired to order, Jennie," said he. "Just you bring me the same as he has, and see that the buckwheats are hot."
"Gee! Buckwheats!" cried Tommy. "I didn't know there was buckwheats—bring me a stack of 'em too, Jennie!"
"Cannot sleep comfortably between the sheets of William James's pragmatic philosophy, dry as they are.""Cannot sleep comfortably between the sheets of William James's pragmatic philosophy, dry as they are."
And all of this was on the American plan, at therate of two dollars for three meals and a night's lodging! I am afraid my friend of the uncertain digestive organs belonged to the same gastronomic school as a famous war correspondent I met at my club many years ago. He was an Englishman, and was delightfully enthusiastic about everything he had found in America except our hotels.
"And even they wouldn't be so bad," said he, "if it wasn't for that beastly American plan upon which they're run. Why, out in San Francisco I actually had to eat and eat and eat until I was positively ill, to get ahead of the game!"
Traveling Americans are inclined to criticize the hotels of foreign countries for their lack of bathroom facilities, and I recall an occasion in Rome some years ago when I found the act of taking a dip in the one bathroom the hotel provided almost as formal a function as a presentation at the Vatican, involving a series of escorts from my room to the dark little hole on an upper floor where the tub was kept, far greater in number than those involved in my progress from the American college to the papal presence.
Indeed, the only occasion I can recall when in a foreign country I was able to get a bath withoutencountering all sorts of obstacles was also in Rome, four years ago, when I endeavored to order a bottle of mineral water in my choicest Italian, and got a bath instead, the whiskered male chambermaid of whom I ordered it having little familiarity with his own tongue as "she was spoke" by an American.
But precisely similar conditions exist in this country. An eminent singer in one of his famous poems lamented the difficulty of getting the Time, the Place, and the Girl together; but if he had ever gone on the Chautauqua circuit in this land I fear he would have written also of the well nigh impossible operation of getting the Time, the Place, and the Tub together; and I may add that I wish a law might be passed requiring hotels that do provide bathing facilities to supply also at least one towel that is visible to the naked eye.
The story of the man who asked an Indiana hotel clerk to "give" him "a room and a bath," to be greeted by the instant response, "We'll give you the room; but you'll have to wash yourself," contains quite as much truth as humor. I had to forego my dip in a Southern hotel on one morning because "the last feller that took a bathhere run off with the key to the door," and then on the following morning when the bathroom door had been forced open I found the tub constructed of tiles, with a lush growth of morning glory vines sprouting up between them. When in an Ohio hotel several years ago, having insisted upon a room with a bath, I found the latter in a dark cubbyhole whose doors and windows had evidently not been opened for months. Atmospherically speaking, the Black Hole of Calcutta was a thing of sweetness and light compared to it. Nearly suffocated, I struggled with the frosted-glass window at one side of the cell for several minutes, and finally with a supreme effort got it up: only to find that itopened on an inner corridor of the hotel.
And be it recorded that the heating facilities are quite on a par with these. The heating apparatus of most hotels is either missing altogether, or terrifying in character. The latter sort is especially in evidence in the natural gas regions, where that useful commodity is used with an airy carelessness that inspires dreadful forebodings.
I shall never forget my first introduction to natural gas as a heating proposition. It was in anhistoric edifice in Ohio, which I shall not name; for it has already been sufficiently advertised by its "loving friends." Suffice it to say that by some strange oversight of Nature it still stands. To get to my room, in the first place I was compelled to rise several flights in an elevator whose lift was as uncertain as its years, and then with the aid of a hallboy to thread an intricate maze of interlocking corridors alongside of which the Dedalian Labyrinth was simplicity itself. Arrived finally in the room assigned to me, I found it dark, damp, and cold.
"How about a little heat here, Son?" said I, appealing to the hallboy.
"Sure!" said he.
The boy faded into the gloom of the far end of the room, leaned over, and tugged away vigorously for a few moments on a screw in the baseboard, and then standing back about two feet he began to bombard the wall with lighted matches—the kind which light only on the seat of a bellboy's trousers. I shall not attempt to say how many of these he lit and threw at the wall before anything happened. It seemed to be an appalling number, and considering the manifest inflammability of the building,and the height of my room from the ground, it made me very nervous.
"What the dickens are you doing?" said I.
But there was neither time nor need for his answer. One well projected match seemed to hit the particular bullseye he was aiming at. There came a boom and a flash, and in a second I saw a half-dozen sizable flames creeping upward from the floor to a point about breast high on the wall, where by some strange miracle the conflagration stopped.
"Nacheril gas!" said the boy, with a grin, as he departed.
It had been my intention to remain overnight in that city; but when I realized that that same process was probably going on in at least a dozen other apartments, above, beside, and below me, I suddenly decided to return to New York on the night train. I will take my chances on the future life; but while I live, breathe, and have my being upon this terrestrial orb I believe in getting fire risks down to their lowest reducible minimum by adopting a policy of complete avoidance.
Our clever newspaper humorists have made a good deal of capital out of the haughty hotel clerkwith the diamond stud; but I must confess that I have never yet encountered this individual in the wide swath of my wanderings. Save in one or two places, I have found on the contrary a genial solicitude for my welfare, wholly undecorated as to shirt-front—often indeed without the shirt-front itself—which has more than offset such shortcomings as were characteristic of the inns over whose desks they presided.
On one occasion in Indianapolis I encountered what seemed at first to be a heartless lack of appreciation and cordial recognition on my arrival; but it was more than compensated for in the end, and I should add was rather the result of a too high expectation on my own part than the fault of the man behind the register. I had long wished to visit Indianapolis, largely because of its national reputation as a literary center. A State that has produced so many authors of high distinction as have come out of Indiana, with her General Lew Wallace, her James Whitcomb Riley, Charles Major, Meredith Nicholson, George Ade, Booth Tarkington, and those two purveyors of wholesome fiction and good, clean humor, the McCutcheon brothers, is entitled to some of the laureledinterest of a literary Mecca, and I registered at the Claypool in my boldest hand, quietly and confidently expecting some immediate recognition, such as a not altogether unknown worker on the slopes of Parnassus might expect to receive on arriving at Olympus.
The room clerk whisked the register round and studied the inscription for a moment. "What's that—Boggs?" he inquired.
"No," said I, my crest falling a bit, "Bangs—John Ken—"
"Oh," said he, bringing his hand down heavily on the bell. "Front, show this gentleman to number three hundred and nine."
He tossed a key to the bellboy, which the latter caught with the dexterity of a Buck Ewing, the prize catcher in the ball games of my young manhood, and holding my diminished head as high as I could I followed him to the elevator, devoutly wishing that Riley or Ade might happen in and fall upon my neck, and show that low-browed room clerk a thing or two he wouldn't forget in a hurry.
And then came a sort ofamende honorable. Scarcely had I got settled in number three hundred and nine when a second bellboy arrived, bearing anote addressed to "Mr. John Henry Banks," neatly typewritten, and reading as follows:
Dear Sir,—If you wish a table for the display of your samples and a plug key for the protection of the same, please apply at the office.Respectfully,The Claypool.
Dear Sir,—If you wish a table for the display of your samples and a plug key for the protection of the same, please apply at the office.
Respectfully,The Claypool.
It was a salutary experience, and in my subsequent visits to the Athens of America I have approached it in an appropriate spirit of humility and respect. And philosophically I have tried to comfort myself with the thought that after all it would not be very surprising if a scuttleful of coal arriving at Newcastle were to find its coming a matter of small importance to those good people who dig that useful commodity out of the bowels of the earth at the rate of ten carloads a minute. Why should a mere writer of books arriving at Indianapolis expect to create any special commotion, when it is a well known fact that you could not possibly heave a brick in any direction in that charming city without hitting an author?
I think that for sheer originality in his craft, as well as for his human interest, I must award the palm among innkeepers I have met to a vigorous old fellow who either ran, or was run by, a hotel Ionce visited in South Dakota. He was known to most people as "Conk": not because of the rather hard shell one had to penetrate to get at him, but because it was the first syllable of his last name.
His hotel was a two-story brick structure, sadly in need of a Noachian Deluge for its preliminary renovation, and built upon the pleasing lines of an infant penitentiary. This illusion was faithfully carried out by the rooms within, which had many of the physical qualities of the cells of commerce. The hotel had a dining room; but Conk had given up serving meals therein, and had also as far as I could observe abandoned everything else in the way of service as well.
My Muse and I arrived several hours before dawn, and after wandering hand in hand for twenty or thirty minutes along invisible highways reached the edifice. We registered, and were ushered to a pigeonhole on the second tier by a large, yellow-haired youth, who was trying to keep awake and mop up the office floor simultaneously, succeeding only indifferently in both operations. The particular cell set apart for our accommodation was lit by a half-candlepower bulb with a pronounced flicker, which shed a dim, religiouslight upon a walled-in space about ten feet square. In this there was a double bed, a nondescript piece of furniture which suggested a collision between a washstand and a bureau, a rocking chair that refused to rock, and a cane-bottomed arrangement of perilous spindles that wouldn't do anything else. After I had disposed of our two suitcases and my typewriting machine the only solution of another difficulty that immediately arose was to leave our feet out in the hall.
As soon as I noted the rather limited character of our accommodations I repaired below, to see if there was not available something a trifle more roomy: to find only the satisfaction involved in the contemplation of the tow-headed six-footer lying asleep on a bench exchanging dreamy nothings with his mop, which he held hugged tight to his breast. With persistent effort I might have awakened the mop; but the tow-headed youth was too far gone into the land of dreams to be recalled by anything short of a universal cataclysm. I therefore crept sadly up the stairs to our cell, and we reclined on the double bed until dawn, at which time the merciful providence of the half-candlepower bulb was completely revealed unto us; for if we had beenable to see that bed in its dim light no power on earth, not all the mobilized armies of the world could have induced us to lie down upon it.
An hour later we breakfasted on ham and eggs at a stand-up all-night lunch counter which we located after much wandering, and then, returning to the hotel, Brother Conk in all his muscular majesty dawned upon the horizon of my life. I can best describe him by saying that whatever he might do in action, a camera fiend would have found in him a perfect model for a snapshot of the long-looked-for White Hope. He was huge and indescribably red. His name should have been Rufus, and the hand of Esau was a smoothly shaven thing alongside of the Conkian fist. He had a penetrating, yet rolling eye that would have subjugated a Kaiser with a single glance. He was scrutinizing his fingernails as we entered his presence, and in view of my supreme ambition to remain a hero always in the eyes of my Muse I saw her safely deposited in our hermetically sealed receiving vault above before venturing to address the gentleman. This done, I started in to pay my respects to Mine Host.
"I don't suppose you could let us have a largerroom," said I tentatively, my words coming with a husky falter.
"I dunno what room ya got," was the gruff response, one of the rolling eyes settling full upon both of mine.
"We're in nun-number thirty-two," I ventured meekly.
"Well, thirty-three's an inch and a half wider," said he, biting off a hang nail. "Ya can move inta that if ya wanta."
It hardly seemed worth while, and considering that in respect to matters other than its size, or lack of it, we already knew the worst as to thirty-two, we left thirty-three unvisited on the principle that
—makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of.
There were enough wings loose in number thirty-two to enable us to fly anywhere on the face of the earth; but we decided not to avail ourselves of them.
"Never mind, my dear," said I. "Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe."
And the Only Muse merely laughed, and with feminine exaggeration comforted me with the assurancethat "it might be worse." I suppose it might have been; though I don't know how. Anyhow I sat down on the rockless rocker, drew an overdraft on the bank of cheer, and proceeded to read aloud that fine story of Fiona Macleod's about the good old North Countryman who every morning walked out upon his breezy headland and "took off his hat to the beauty of the world."
Later in the day the chairman of the lecture committee called to pay his respects, and in the course of our conversation I told him of my experience with Conk.
"I congratulate you most heartily," said he, laughing. "You came off rather better than an exchange professor from Germany who came out here last year to give a course of lectures at our agricultural college. He asked Conk in his pleasant German way for more spacious quarters, and Conk's answer was, 'Sure I can give ya more space.' And taking the professor's suitcase in one hand, and the professor in the other, he rushed them both to the front door, threw the suitcase out into the street, and, pushing the professor gently out after it, remarked, 'There—I guess there's room, enough for ya out there.'"
Whether the chairman was a mind reader or not I do not know; but I do know that in response to my telepathic calls for help he turned to the Only Muse and suggested that in view of certain possibilities which might incapacitate me from filling my engagement at the lecture hall that night we had much better move over to his house, where we would find a warm welcome.
"That's fine!" said I, rising with alacrity. "Just you take her over with you now, and I'll see Conk, and pay my bill, and come over as soon as I can with our luggage."
The plan was promptly carried out, and after seeing the Only Muse safely on her way to other quarters I went to number thirty-two, gathered up our traps, and with trepidation in my soul approached the landlord. This time I found him sitting in the office, before the window, staring Nature out of countenance.
"Well, Mr. Landlord," I said, as affably as I knew how, "I—I've come to—to settle up. It seems we were expected to stay with Dr. and Mrs. Soandso. We—er—we didn't know it when we arrived—and I—I'm sorry to leave you; but—er—but of course—"
"Thank God!" the landlord returned explosively, rising and seizing my hand in a viselike grip that even to remember two years later causes me anguish. "That's the first good news I've had to-day. I been running this blankety blank blank joint for seven years now, and it's cost me over thirty thousand dollars already, and every time I see a blinkety blank blank boarder come in through that front door it makes me so dashed sick that I feel like nailin' the blankety blank door up so tight old Beelzybub himself'd have to come down through the chimbley to get inside!"
It was at this point that Conk and I parted company at the beginning of what I am inclined to think might have ripened into a lifelong friendship.I had got his point of view!Strange as his conception of hospitality seemed superficially to be, there was reason in him, and I began to perceive that he had some mighty good points. Frankness was one of them, and gratitude, and one of the incidents of his career as narrated to me later by one of his neighbors was convincing proof that, in sporting parlance, the old fellow was a good loser.
It seems that a certain traveling man of greatnerve force stopped overnight some years ago with Conk, probably occupying number thirty-two. It was a fearfully hot night, and the room became unbearably stuffy. For a long time the suffering guest strove to open the window, but without results. Prayer, condemnation, muscular force, all alike were powerless to move it. Finally in desperation the unhappy visitor threw on his dressing robe, and stalked down to the office to make complaint.
"It's hotter than Tophet in that room of mine," he protested, "and I've been monkeying with that dod-gasted window of yours for the last hour, and the dinged thing won't give an inch!"
"Well, if ya can't move it, why in Dothan dontcha kick it out?" retorted Conk coldly.
"All right, I will," said the guest, returning to the furnace above.
And he did. Glass, frame, and sash were kicked with all the power of an angry man into a mass of wreckage never again to be redeemed.
"Well," said the guest the following morning, as he started to leave for the station, "what's the tax? What do I owe you?"
"Not a blamed cent!" gruffed Conk. "You'rethe first son of a sea cook that's ever had the nerve to call my bluff, andby Henry you don't pay a nickel into my till except over my dead body!"
If I have seemed in any wise severe in my treatment of Conk in this tribute to his memory, I am sorry. The material facts could hardly be glossed over; but as for the man himself I am truly glad to have met him. I wouldn't have missed him for a farm. He was not much of a Chesterfield; but he had his own ways, and they gave me a thrill. The joyous, almost grateful courtesy with which he put me out of his front door was a thing to remember, and I in turn am everlastingly grateful to him for letting me out on the ground floor instead of seizing me by the left leg and dragging me up through the skylight, and throwing me off the roof. He could have done it easily, and I am sure it was only the intrinsic, if considerably latent, nobility of his soul that restrained the impulse to do so that I am confident he felt.
"Yours must be an extra hazardous occupation," said a chance acquaintance on a little trip through Ohio last year. "Do you carry any insurance?"
"Yes," said I. "I have an excellent accident insurance policy, and it is a great comfort. Sometimes on dark nights when I am suddenly awakened by some catastrophic quivering of my berth, as if a young earthquake had come aboard, and realize that the train has probably left the track, and is traveling ahead at a mile-a-minute clip over the rocky bed of some mountain stream, it is a real pleasure to me to foot up the sum total of the affluence that will be mine if we fail to strike a switch somewhere that will get us back on the main line again."
"Affluence is good," said he; "but it won't be yours—not if you break your neck."
"Oh, I never think of that," said I. "I think only of the possibility of injuries, and from that point of view the accident insurance policy is a joy forever. It makes you think so well of yourself, and as you lie off in your berth figuring on two legs and a couple of arms at five thousand dollars apiece, twenty toes and fingers at two hundred and fifty a digit, with your neck valued at twenty-five thousand dollars, you begin to feel that a man isn't such a worthless creature after all. I suppose even my nose is worth something."
"Great Scott!" he ejaculated. "Do toes and fingers come as high as that?"
"They do," said I. "I've carried a policy assuring me a market for them at that rate for the last five years, and if I lose them in a railway smash-up, in a taxicab, in a trolley, or in a public elevator somewhere, the quotation doubles. Under certain contingencies my fingers and toes have a market value of ten thousand dollars."
"Heavens!" he cried. "Have you ever had any luck?"
From his point of view I presume I have not had any "luck"; but I am content, satisfied, and even grateful that so far the exigencies of travel havenot required me to collect anything on my policy, or compelled me to sacrifice any of my digital collateral even at what seem to be par or premium prices.
But my friend was not altogether wrong in regarding the occupation of an itinerant lyceumite as a hazardous one. If one were to conjure up a picture of the gods of evil shooting darts at human targets, one might think that, a moving object being harder to hit than one that is definitely fixed, the former would prove a better risk than the latter; but it is one of the paradoxes of life that this is not the case, unless of course the sniping fates are better sharpshooters than professional artillerists.
The possibilities of accident to one who is constantly moving from pillar to post on American railways, many of them starved to death in the name of Progress, and unable to maintain an equipment that is even moderately safe; on steamboat lines many of whose vessels are little more than resin-soaked tinderboxes, over-crowded with pipe and cigarette smokers, and speeding through fog-bound waters at night as though the Evil One himself were just astern in pursuit of the Captain;sleeping in hotels constructed of Georgia pine, on mattresses stuffed with excelsior, with matches that, like flies, will light on anything in sight, strewn about on every side,—well, to commute this sentence, the possibilities of accident to such a one are of such a sort that "age cannot wither nor custom stale their infinite variety."
And as for the lecture halls, one now and then encounters a place where it seems as though it were a vain-glorious tempting of fate to enter it. I recall one marvelous hall in one of the most cultured sections of New England, in a town not more than seventy-five miles from Boston, the home of one of America's most famous schools, and the capital of a State that has produced men of worldwide eminence, which in any Court of Commonsense would have been indicted as a menace to the public welfare. It was reached by a climb of two flights of stairs, the first scarcely wide enough for two people to walk up abreast, and the second rising from the end of a dimly lighted corridor up six steps to a landing whence ran on each side two other sections of four or five steps each to a second landing, with still a third turn and another climb before the auditorium floor wasreached; and all this in an ordinary brick building, erected long before fireproof construction was even thought of.
My lecture in this architectural device of Beelzebub was delivered before an audience of four hundred people, just one week after the terrible disaster at Boyerstown, Pennsylvania, in which I know not how many lives were lost in a fire started by the explosion of a cinematograph machine. As I stepped upon the stage I inquired of my escort if there were any fire escapes on the building, and was informed that a huge iron door at the rear of the stage opened upon one. I was moderately relieved until I tried to open the iron door, only to find it locked—and the janitor had left the key at home!I may add that if my memory serves me correctly—and it does—this ingeniously designed atrocity was pleasantly and appropriately known as Phenix Hall.Absit omen!
In the main, however, the lecture halls of America are rather fine affairs. In the State of New York and on the other side of the Mississippi River I have found splendid auditoriums, acoustically perfect, well ventilated, and as nearly safe as human ingenuity can make them. The highschools of New York and Massachusetts, and the flourishing educational institutions of the West, have set a pace which other communities would do well to follow: not so much for the sake of the itinerant platformist as for the "safety, honor, and welfare" of their own sons and daughters. In Houston, Texas, where there is a municipally owned free lecture and music course on Sunday afternoons, beginning in October and running through to May, is one of the finest auditoriums I have ever seen anywhere. It seats in comfort and safety an audience of eight thousand, and neither New York, Boston, Philadelphia, nor even Chicago, has anything comparable to it.
I have indeed had luck according to my own conception of it, on trains traveled on, and in respect to trains missed as well. I have been in two railway smash-ups, in the first of which the car behind mine was overturned and reduced to kindling in the twinkling of an eye, and miraculously without serious injury to any one; and in the other the engine directly in front of the car in which I was sitting, having endeavored to jump a frozen switch, succeeded only in landing upon its own back, leaving my car teetering to and fro fora moment as if undecided whether to roll down an embankment, or to remain poised on its offside wheels like a ballet girl balanced upon one tangoing toe. If the gentleman who sat beside me on that occasion had shifted his chewing gum to the other side, I think we should have gone plunging down that embankment into the river; but fortunately he was too paralyzed with fear even to do that, and we remained fixed, safe as ever was the intrepid Blondin when he essayed to walk across Niagara Falls on his slack wire.
As for the trains missed, it was only an over-prolonged discussion of the mysteries of golf between myself and a past-master of putting at Haverhill, Massachusetts, which caused me to miss by ten seconds a section of the Portland Express to New York that five hours later landed in a ditch somewhere in Connecticut.
In respect to perils by water there are the steamboat perils, and those more insidious dangers that come from too free indulgence in the only kind of beverage the wise platformist dares adopt as a steady tipple. These latter perils I have tried to reduce to a minimum by having a billion and a half typhus germs mobilized within to patrolmy system, so that any skulking bacilli seeking to spread revolutionary ideas in my midst, and gaining admittance thereto through my taste for ice water, will be seized and duly throttled ere they have time to lay the foundation for an effective propaganda.
"If he had shifted his chewing gum to the other side, we should have plunged into the river.""If he had shifted his chewing gum to the other side, we should have plunged into the river."
But there is no inoculation against the perils of steamboats; although I have been in imminent danger only once in this way, and in its ultimate results even that was far more amusing than terrifying. I was on my way to Boston by the Fall River boat when the incident occurred. The night was foggy, and I retired early. The faithful craft kept steadily on her way, feeling her path through the dark waters of the sound. I slept only fitfully until midnight, when weary Nature at last asserted herself, and I fell into a profound slumber. At four in the morning, however, I was awakened rudely by a fierce shriek of the whistle, a seemingly quick reversal of the engines, a very decided shock as of an impact with some heavy body, followed by a grinding sound, and much shouting.
I sprang from my berth, and glancing out of the window could see nothing but grimly gray fog. It was the work of a moment to jump into my shoes and bathrobe, and go speeding out into the main saloon.
"Any danger, Porter?" I inquired of a wide-awake gentleman of color, who was leaning over the stair-railing.
"Not unless yo' goes asho', Kuhnnel," he replied with a grin. "Dis is Newport."
But there are perils other than these which must be taken into account in reckoning up the hazards of the profession—or perhaps in view of the eternity of the chase it were better called a pursuit. They include exposure to almost every kind of catastrophe mentioned in the Litany, from battle, murder, and sudden death, through hunger and thirst, to the tapering point of mere necessity and tribulation.
I have nearly starved with teeming granaries on every side of me. Once in a delightful mid-New York community which I have since revisited and come to hold in affection, I found myself after a long, tedious, and foodless journey at a hotel where the table was frankly impossible. I arrived late, and out of an ample bill of fare there was nothing left but a few scraps of preserved fish, and not very well preserved at that. If fish could be personified, this particular bit of piscatorial cussedness might have passed as the Rip Van Winkle of the Sea, so long had it evidently been since it left its home in the depths. The merest glance at it filled the eye with visions of serried ranks of ptomaines, armedcap-à-pie for trouble. It waved the red flag of digestive anarchy from the end of every bone and fin, and fortunately for me the very pungency of its aroma took care of my hunger for the moment. One sniff appeased my appetite for any kind of food.
Later, when the chairman of the committee called and invited me to take a drive with him about the town, even though I had had nothing to eat for nearly twelve hours, I accepted. At the end of our drive we stopped at the chairman's home, a delightfully comfortable, newly built house, which he had designed himself and of which he was justly proud. As we entered his dining room a natural association of ideas caused my appetite to return with renewed vigor, and I thought I saw a chance for at least one good meal that day.
"By Jove, Doctor!" said I, "what a pretty room this is!" And then I added, with all the pathos I could put into my voice, "You don't know what a joy it is to get a glimpse now and then of a real home dining room after eating day after day in some of these fearful country hotels. I don't want to seem unduly critical, but really Igot the worst dinner at the Blithers House to-day that I've ever had." And I stood expectant.
"Well," he said reflectively, "you'll get a worse supper!"
And lo, it was so.
A similarly distressing moment one morning out in Montana once brought me a more satisfactory tribute. My train was hours late, and no preparations had been made by the usually considerate management of the Northern Pacific Railroad for the refreshment of the inner man. There was neither diner nor buffet on the train, and as the morning wore on toward noon I became famished to the extent of positive pain and general giddiness. To my supreme relief, however, along about half-past eleven o'clock the train drew into the little station of Livingston, where connections are made by travelers to the Yellowstone. As we drew slowly in the welcome sign of "LUNCH ROOM" greeted my vision; but the train did not stop until we had passed the sign by at least a hundred yards. Finally when we came to a standstill I rushed to the rear platform of the train, and was about to jump off when the conductor intervened.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"For food," said I. "I'm nearly dead for a cup of coffee."
"We're not going to stop any time," said he, with a glance at his watch. "We're seven hours late as it is."
"Oh, come now, Conductor!" said I. "Five minutes more isn't going to hurt anybody—"
"All right," said he, "go ahead. Only when you hear the whistle blow don't lose a minute, hungry or no hungry."
With that understanding I sped to the lunch counter, and in a few moments had a roll and a steaming cup of coffee before me; but, alas for all human expectations! the coffee was so fearfully hot nothing but a salamander could have hoped to drink it with safety, and I had hardly taken one scalding sip of it when the whistle blew sharply. There was but one thing to do, and I did it. I poured the coffee into my saucer and drained as much as I could of it from that, thrust the roll into my pocket, and darted after the train, which had already begun to move slowly, conscious all the while of the soft thud of pattering feet, like those of the white rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland,"behind me. I caught the train, seizing the rear platform rail with one hand, and when swinging myself on board was projected almost flat on my face by another passenger who suddenly developed like an infant battering ram at the rear. He was a little man, and his breath came in appropriate pants. Both completely winded, we gazed into each other's eyes.
"Bub-beg pardon," he gasped. "I dud-didn't mean to bub-bump into you. Very grateful to you—yuh—you saved my life!"
"Saved your life?" said I. "How so?"
"Why," said he, "I was nearly gone for want of my coffee, and the stuff was so infernally hot I couldn't drink it, and then when I saw you pouring yours out into your saucer, I says to myself, 'Well, if a swell-lookin' guy like that kin do that, I kin,—an' b'gosh, I did!"
A not infrequent source of terror to the platform speaker, if not a real peril, is the small boy one encounters en route, singly and alone or in groups. I am glad to say that I have always delighted in him, and so far, despite the possibilities, none of my contacts with him has resulted disastrously; but, while nobody ever need mark him"FRAGILE," it is none the less true that he should be handled with care, and kept right side up if possible, for the sake of the general comfort.
One of these youngsters once gave me a supreme example of intrinsic honesty which I shall never forget. I met him on the evening of my lecture in the town of Everett, Massachusetts. I had somehow got the notion that Everett was farther afield from Boston than it really is, and starting early I arrived at the high school hall a full hour before the advertised time. The building was dark, and every door was locked; so that for some thirty or forty minutes I was compelled to pace the sidewalk in front of it, awaiting the arrival of somebody who could let me in. After several turns up and down the street I was accosted by a bright-faced little urchin who held a ticket for my lecture in his hand.
"Want to buy a ticket for to-night's lecture, mister?" said he.
"No, son," said I. "I've heard this lecture several times already, and I wouldn't go through it again for seven dollars."
"Gee!" he ejaculated. "If it's as bad as that, I guess I'd better tear this up."And he destroyed the ticket on which he had doubtless expected to realize much soda-water money before my very eyes, and went whistling along upon his honest little way.
Perhaps this little lad does not come properly under the head of Hazards; but in one of the larger cities of Arkansas I once came upon a group of boys who did, and they kept me in a state of trepidation for a goodly part of the evening. It happened that simultaneously with my arrival in town there arrived also a snowstorm that for that section of the country was a heavy one. Heavy or light, it brought with it enough snow to provide these forty-odd youngsters with the kind of occupation that all healthy-minded youngsters find to their taste—that of snow-balling passersby. When my motor arrived at the lecture hall the boys were on hand, and for two or three minutes the car was the object of a fierce fusillade of icy missiles that nearly put the chauffeur out of commission. The committee hustled me into the hall with no more damage than one rather slushy splosh of snow perilously close to my neck.
"It's a shame, Mr. Bangs," said the chairman, "and I apologize. These boys aren't a bad lot;but they are irrepressible. I'd advise you to go slow with them to-night. They've broken up two lectures already."
"Gracious!" said I. "Do they attend the lectures?"
"Yes," said the chairman. "By arrangement with the school authorities they have the first two rows reserved for them free."
And sure enough when I walked out upon the platform there they were, two solid rows of them, eying me like hungry birds of prey ready to pounce upon a particularly luscious morsel. I should have fled if flight had been possible; but it was not, and I looked forward to an hour and a half of trial. But as the chairman was introducing me an idea popped into my head which I am glad to say saved the day—or rather the night. Instead of my usual opening I addressed a few words to the boys.
"It is an awful shame, my young friends," said I, "that the requirements of this lecture course and the necessities of my own engagements compel you and me to waste such a delightful evening as this indoors. I feel just as badly as you do about it; for while what few hairs I have are gray, I giveyou my word that I'd rather go into a good redhot snowball fight with you than listen to the finest lecture that was ever delivered. If I didn't have to go on to Memphis to-night, I'd ask the committee and the audience to postpone this lecture until the snow melts, so that I could show you what a corking shot I am at any old beaver hat, moving or fixed, that ever crowned a mortal head."
The effect was instantaneous. A wave of enthusiasm swept over the lads, and the only interference I had from them during my talk was a somewhat too-ready inclination on their part to help me along with laughter and applause at points where tears and silence would have been more appropriate. Moreover, when at the close of my lecture I started with some reluctance to leave the hall, instead of the volley of arctic ammunition that I had expected, I found those youngsters lined up twenty on a side between the door and my motor with their hats off, forming a little alley of honor for me to tread, giving me three rousing cheers as I departed.
From which somewhat trying experience I deduce that there is a good deal more latent courtesyin Young America than certain despairing critics of modern manners would have us believe. It may be that the reason why we do not find it oftener is that we do not ourselves give it the opportunity to express itself.
I have spoken of our exposure to "battle, murder, and sudden death," and to some it may have seemed an exaggeration to claim anything of the sort as a platform peril; and yet there was one occasion upon which I was so uncomfortably tangent to such conditions that they seemed all too real. It was in one of our far western States. Scheduled to lecture there at eightP.M., my train did not reach the town until nine-forty-five. I had telegraphed news of my delay ahead, and my audience with rare courtesy had voted to remain at the hall until I arrived.
I dressed on the train, and on descending from it was whisked to the opera house in a prehistoric hack, which shed one of its wheels en route, spilling the committee and myself into the road, but without damage; while my Only Muse went on to the hotel, a two-story affair, where she secured accommodations for the night. Later, on the conclusion of my talk, on my arrival at the hotel, Ifound the Muse sitting up in bed, pallid as a ghost, with a revolver at her side.