"Laughter where tears would have been more appropriate.""Laughter where tears would have been more appropriate."
"What on earth is the matter with you?" I demanded, more than startled at the sight.
She hardly needed to answer; for almost as I spoke from a saloon located immediately underneath our room came the sharp crack of pistols.Somebody below there was engaged in the pleasing occupation of "shooting up" the place. Not having seen the plans and specifications of the hotel, I did not know how thick the floor was, or what were the prospects for a sudden eruption of bullets through the carpet. It was not any safer to venture out either; for there was no telling how far the trouble might spread. So I jumped into bed and trusted to a combination of Providence, floor, and hair mattress to hold me immune. The disturbance did not last long, however, and shortly after midnight all was quiet, and sleep came.
Two hours later we were awakened by a snarling quarrel going on directly under our window. Two men were applying epithets of an uncomplimentary nature to each other, when suddenly one of them passed the bounds of even occidental toleration. He called the other a name that no right-minded man could be expected to stand, and we heard three sharp cracks of a revolver zipping out in the air. We sprang from the bed and rushed to the window, and there lying flat on his back, on a light fall of snow, in the glare of an electric lamp, was a man, with a gradually widening red spot staining the white of the road onwhich he lay. There was no sign of an assailant anywhere; but in a few moments, in absolute, almost ghostly silence, black figures appeared from seemingly everywhere, and bent over the fallen victim. We could hear low whisperings, and then suddenly one of the black figures detached himself from the group, and ran off down the street, returning shortly with a covered carriage. Into this the murdered man was placed, the carriage was driven off, the snow muffling the feet of the horses, the black figures vanished as silently as they had come, and all that was left of the tragedy was the red spot in the snow.
We had heard tales of witnesses to similar disturbances being detained for months under surveillance, practically prisoners of the law, pending the trial of the guilty, and were in no mind to suffer a similar experience ourselves. Wherefore when morning came we rose with the first glimmer of dawn, packed our suitcases, and, asking no questions of anybody, departed for other scenes on the earliest milk train we could catch; which happened, fortunately, to be going in the right direction for us.
Personally I have a horror of the Zeppelin andits powers to make things uncomfortable from its aërial thoroughfares; but as between it and the perils of being shot up from below by playful spirits in a frontier saloon I think I shall choose the Zeppelin if the choice must be made. At any rate, if either emergency should ever again enter into my life, I trust I shall have a bomb-proof roof overhead, or an armor-plated hair mattress underneath me; for I have no taste for a last end in which a coroner will be called upon to decide whether the victim of the affair was a mortal being, or a lifeless combination of porous plaster and human sieve.
I shall never forget the expression of serene immunity from care on the face of one of my editorial chiefs when some years ago I told him that I was very much embarrassed by certain arrangements he himself had made over my head. They were such arrangements as to make my position frankly impossible.
"You have embarrassed me more than I care to say," said I.
"Embarrassment is a sign of weakness," he replied calmly. "Don't ever be embarrassed."
"But what can I do?" said I. "You have made these arrangements, and—"
"Well, if I were you," said he, smiling, and putting considerable emphasis on theyou, "rather than admit that anything under heaven embarrassed me I'd tellmeto go to the devil with my arrangements."
I took him at his word. We both laughed, and the immediate awkwardness vanished. While I cannot truthfully say that telling him to "go to" was a wholly satisfactory ultimate solution of all our difficulties, I have as a matter of policy adopted that attitude toward troublesome things ever since, to the material advantage at least of my own peace of mind. I have found the philosophy involved a workable one, and more than helpful to me in the pursuit of my platform labors, especially that part of it involving the "laugh."
It certainly rescued me from a deal of unhappiness over a wasted date a year or so ago in Michigan, for which I was in no sense to blame, and which, had the various parties been inclined to quarrel over misfortune, might have resulted in much unpleasantness.
Following a Wednesday night engagement in mid-Ohio was a Thursday night in a more or less remote section of the Wolverine State. To reach the Thursday night scene of action I was required to rise at five o'clock in the morning and travel with one or two awkward changes of trains to Fort Wayne, going thence to Kalamazoo, and from there by a way train to the point in question. Itwas a long, tedious drive of a day, and when I reached Kalamazoo I unburdened myself vigorously to the Only Muse to the effect that if anybody, anywhere, would offer me a job as third assistant manager of a tolerably stationary peanut stand at two dollars a week, payable in deferred promises, I should consider the offer a most tempting one.
My comfort was not at all enhanced by my discovery on reaching Kalamazoo that I had completely misread the timetables, and that instead of arriving at our destination at five in the afternoon, leaving me plenty of time for rest, refreshment, and change of clothes, the only possible train, even if it ran on time, could not get me through to the haven of my desires until five minutes before eight, with the lecture scheduled to begin at eight-fifteen. So I rested, refreshed, and dressed at Kalamazoo, and perforce traveled over the last stage of that wearisome journey in full evening dress, slowly but surely accumulating en route a sufficient supply of soot, cinders, grit, and other appurtenances of travel on a soft-coal, one-horse railroad, to make me appear like a masterpiece of spatterwork when I arrived at the farther end.
By some odd mischance, never as yet satisfactorily accounted for, the train got through on time. The Only Muse and I hastily boarded an omnibus, and were whisked through the impenetrable depths of a dark night to the hotel, whence, after seeing her properly bestowed, I hastened to the Auditorium where the lecture was to be held. To my surprise when I got there I found the building wholly dark. There was not a sign of life anywhere about it. I banged, whacked, and thundered on the door like an invading artillery corps; but with no response of any sort. But a glance up the street a moment later relieved the pressure of my woe; for there my vision was cheered by a brilliantly lighted church.
"Of course," I thought, "the Auditorium is too small to accommodate the audience, and they've changed over to the church."
I glanced at my watch, and discovered that I had two minutes to spare. A goodly sprint brought me panting to the front door of the edifice, and with some unnecessary noise, perhaps due wholly to the impetuosity of my approach, I burst in upon the assembled multitude—to find, alas!that the very sizable audience gathered there with their heads bowed, and listening to an eloquent appeal for blessings desired by a gentleman wearing a long frock coat and a white necktie, were not for me. To my chagrin I soon learned that I had come within an ace ofbreaking upa prayer meeting—if I may be allowed the use of such incongruous terms in the phrase. I backed out as gracefully as I could, and collided with a late comer.
"Is there more than one Auditorium in town?" I whispered, after apologizing for my reactionary behavior.
"Oh, yes," he replied politely, "there is the Auditorium, and the High School Auditorium."
"I found the building wholly dark.""I found the building wholly dark."
"Well, would you mind telling me where they are?" I queried.
"That is the High School Auditorium up there," he said, pointing to the Egyptian darkness I had just left. "The other is three squares down, where you see all those electric lights."
Whether I thanked the gentleman or not I do not know. I hope I did; but in the hurry of my departure I fear I seemed discourteous. Another speedy dash, which left me completely winded, brought me to the other Auditorium, and there in the full glare of an electric spotlight, assisted in its quest of publicity by a hoarse-tongued barker with a megaphone, I was confronted by a highly colored lithograph, showing a very pink Mabel, Queen of the Movies, standing before a very blue American soldier tied to a tree, shielding him from the bullets of a line of very green Mexicans, under the command of a very red villain, holding a very mauve sword in his very yellow hand, and bidding them to "Fire!" If I was expected to take any part in the thrilling episode that appeared to be going on inside, there was nothing in the chromatic advertising outside to indicate the fact; though I confess I was becoming painfully conscious of certainstrong resemblances between my very breathless self and that very blue American trooper tied to the tree.
"Excuse me," said I, addressing the barker, "but is there to be a lecture here to-night?"
"Not so's anybody'd notice it," said he. "These is the movies."
"Well—tell me—is there a lecture course of any kind in this town that you know of?" I asked.
"Sure!" said he. "Miss So-and-So down at the library is runnin' a lecture stunt of some kind this year. You'll find the library on Main Street, opposite the hotel."
Again, late as it was, the skies cleared, and I moved on to the library, completing the circuit of vast numbers of blocks to a point almost opposite the spot I had started from fifteen lifelong minutes before. I arrived in a state of active perspiration and suspended respiration that did not seem to promise much in the way of a successful delivery of my lecture that night. I hoped the Library Auditorium would not prove to be a large one; for in my disorganized condition I did not feel capable of projecting my voice even into the shallows, to say nothing of the sometimes unfathomabledepths of endless tiers of seats. And my hope was realized; in fact it was more than realized, for there wasn't any Library Auditorium at all.
The citizens of that town had a library that was devoted rather to good literature than to architectural splendor. Their books were housed in an ordinary shop, or store. It was deep, narrow, and bookishly cozy, and at the far end of it, seated at a generously large table, engaged in knitting, was a charming lady who glanced up from her needles as I approached.
"Pardon my intrusion, madam," I panted, "but can you tell me where I can find Miss So-and-So?"
"I am Miss So-and-So," she replied graciously.
"Well," said I, "I am Mr. Bangs."
Her knitting fell to the floor. "Why—Mr. Bangs!" she replied, with a gasp almost equal to my own. "I am very glad indeed to see you; but what are you doing here?"
"I—I've come to lecture," I said weakly, almost pleadingly.
"To lecture?" she echoed. "Why, your lecture is not to be until a week from to-night!"
"Then I am afraid we shall have to get my astralbody to work," said I; "for a week from to-night I shall be at Hiawatha, Kansas. How do you propose to have the lecture delivered—by long distance telephone, or parcels post?"
We gazed into each other's eyes for a moment, and then—we both laughed. It seemed the only thing to do.
Gallantry forbids my saying which of us had made the mistake under the terms of the written contract. Suffice it to say that two months later I returned to that good little town, and was received like a conquering hero by an audience that in its cordiality more than compensated me for the distressing effects of an "unlectured lecture."
What promised to be a more serious complication occurred about a month later in Florida, where in pursuance of instructions from my Southern managers I arrived at Daytona on a Monday, to open the flourishing Chautauqua Course, which has become a permanent feature of life at that attractive Southern resort. The seriousness of the situation grew out of the quality of the genius and the nature of the popularity of the other individual involved, who was no less a personage than the Hon. William Jennings Bryan. Any minorstar in the platform firmament who comes into collision with the planetary splendor of this Monarch of Modern Loquacity has about as much chance of escaping unscathed as a tallow-dip would have in a passage at arms with the sun itself.
There is no escaping the fact that Mr. Bryan is the idol of the Chautauqua Circuit, and it is equally true that every bit of the success he has achieved therein he has earned many times over. I am not, never have been, and see no possibility of my ever becoming, a devotee of Mr. Bryan's political fortunes; but as a platform speaker he is far and away the most brilliant and likable personality in the public eye to-day. He is an expert in playing upon the emotions of an audience, large or small—preferably large—as ever was Dudley Buck in the manipulation of the keys and stops of an organ, and he can at will strike chords in the human heart as searchingly appealing as any produced by an Elman or a Kreisler on the violin, or a Paderewski at the piano.
The keynotes of his platform work are a seeming sincerity and a magnetic humanness that are irresistible, and no individual who has ever listened to him in matters outside of political controversy,however reluctant to admit his greatness, has failed to fall beneath the winning spell of man, matter, and method. He is an interesting personality, and has a greater number of points of contact with the general run of humanity than any other public speaker of to-day. It is a stimulating thing to know that in this line of human endeavor he has got his reward in the assured position he holds in a movement at which it is the fashion in some uninformed and cynical quarters to sneer, but which in point of fact has had a supremely awakening effect upon the American people, and for which we are all of us the better off.
"All of which," as a friend of mine once put it after I had expressed myself in similar terms concerning Mr. Bryan, "is some tribute for a narrow-minded, hide-bound, bigoted, old standpat, reactionary, antediluvian Republican to pay to a hated rival!"
I was frankly appalled on arriving at Daytona to find the town placarded from end to end with posters announcing Mr. Bryan's appearance there that evening—my evening, as I had supposed it to be. I did not know exactly what to do. Iknew perfectly well what would happen to me if it came to a hand-to-hand contest for possession of the stage. Physically, with Mr. Bryan and myself left to decide the matter for ourselves, after the fashion of a pair of bantam white hopes, I felt that I might have a fairly good chance to win out; for I am not altogether without brawn, and in the matter of handling a pair of boxing gloves am probably quite as expert as the late Secretary of State; but nobody outside of Matteawan would be so blind to commonsense as to expect an audience anywhere either to stand neutral or to indulge in a policy of "watchful waiting" with such a contest going on on the platform.
My first impulse in the circumstances was to get out of town as quickly and as quietly as I could, and forget that there was such a place as Daytona on the map; but a careful scrutiny of my letter of instructions reassured me. The date, according to the supreme managers at Atlanta, was clearly mine, and I decided at least to go down with colors flying. I have never run from my own lithographs, and I saw no reason why I should flee from Mr. Bryan's. I got in touch with the local committee as soon as possible, and soon had at leastthe solace of companionship in my misery. They were as upset about it as I was.
"But, Mr. Bangs," protested the chairman, almost with tears in his eyes—his voice was full of them—"you aren't due here until to-morrow night."
"I don't see how that can be," I replied unfeelingly. "You know perfectly well that I am not twins, and only twins can appear in two places at once. I am to lecture at Miami to-morrow night."
I handed the gentleman my letter of instructions, confirming my statement. It was all down in black and white.
"It's a perfectly terrible situation," said the chairman, tears even springing from his brow, "and I'm blest if I know what to do!"
"There is only one of three things to be done," said I. "The first is to let me sit in the audience to-night and listen to Mr. Bryan, collecting my fee on the ground that I have earned it by holding my tongue—which is some job for a man primed with unspoken words. The second is to let Mr. Bryan and myself go out on the platform and indulge in a lecture Marathon, he at one side of the stage, I at the other, talking simultaneously, the one thatgets through first to get the gate money. The third and best is for you to telegraph Mr. Bryan and find out direct from him what his understanding is as to the date."
The first or the last of the propositions would have suited me perfectly; for I should have been delighted to listen to Mr. Bryan whether I was paid for it or not—and most assuredly had Mr. Bryan himself laid claim to the date no power on this earth could have lured me into a dispute over its possession. I am too proud of this life to risk its uncertain tenure for the brief glory of an hour on a preëmpted platform.
I am glad to say that before dusk the complication was cleared off; for, the third alternative having been accepted by the committee, Mr. Bryan was caught on the wire, and replied instantly to the effect that he was to lecture that night on some such subject as "The Curse of Wealth" at Palm Beach, where many sufferers from that particular blight are annually gathered together in large numbers. The skies immediately cleared, and I went out that night before a packed house, the unwitting beneficiary of widespread advertising on Mr. Bryan's behalf, and enjoyed myself verymuch; although as I sped along I could "spot" here and there in the audience individuals who, having come to hear Mr. Bryan, like Rachel weeping for her children, "refused to be comforted."
My only lasting regret was that my contract did not call for the payment to me of fifty per cent. of the boxoffice receipts. I have no doubt there were people there that night who thought, and possibly still think, that I stole that audience. And perhaps I did; but I was no more responsible for the theft than was poor little Oliver Twist, who found himself at unexpected places at unlooked for hours through the efforts of those "higher up." I may add too in all sincerity that if Mr. Bryan himself feels, or felt, in any way aggrieved over what he might call my "unearned increment" in listeners, I will gladly exchange fees with him. I will unhesitatingly, at his request, and by return mail, send him my check for the full amount received by me on that somewhat nervous occasion if he will send me a postoffice order for the amount received by him the evening after.
Embarrassments of a less poignant character frequently arise in the matter of unexpected calls for service, for which the public generally assumesthe platform speaker to be necessarily always prepared, but for which as a matter of fact no amount of preparation could adequately fit any man built on the old-fashioned plan in respect to his nervous organization. One of these affairs came into my experience a decade ago, when, crossing the Atlantic Ocean on that high-rolling ocean greyhound, theLucania, I was drafted by an overzealous committee of arrangements to preside over one of those impromptu entertainments got up on shipboard for the benefit of the widows and orphans of those who go down into the sea in ships. To these more than worthy enterprises gratitude for benefits received has always made me a willing contributor; but to participate in them has ever been a trial. I would rather lecture before the inmates of a deaf and dumb asylum with a sore thumb.
The company aboard a transatlantic liner is always, to say the least, "mixed" in the matter of nationality; and, while one might be willing to "make a stab" at being witty before a gathering all English, all French, all German, or Pan-American, woe be unto him who vaingloriously attacks the risibles of a multitude made up of all these widely varying racial elements! Their standardsof humor are as widely divergent as are their several racial strains, and one might as well try to sit on four stools at once with perfect composure as expect to find the "Chair" under such conditions comfortable. One has to acquiesce in such demands, however, or be set down as disagreeable, and when the committee approached me in the matter they received a much readier yes than I really wished to give them.
The night came, and I found myself at the head table in the dining saloon working for dear life to keep the thing going. There was a pretty slim array of talent, and from one end of the program to the other there was nobody to hang a really good joke on, even if I had had one to hang. A chairman can always be facetious at the expense of distinguished people like Chauncey M. Depew, Henry James, or Mr. Caruso, and "get away with it"; but the obscure amateur cannot be handled with brutal impunity. I think I may say truthfully that no man ever worked harder at the pumps of a sinking ship than I did that night. And to make matters worse there was a heavy rolling sea on, and, while I never suffer from seasickness, the combination of motion and nerves mademe uncomfortably conscious of an insurgent midst as I forged hopelessly ahead.
Finally, however, there came a rift in the cloud of my despair. A pleasant little cockney ballad singer who was coming over to America for a season in vaudeville volunteered to sing a ballad. It was well sung, and most pathetic. It depicted in dramatic fashion the delirium of an old British veteran, who, as the hour of death approached him, was fighting over again in fancy the battles of his youth. The refrain of the ballad wasBring me the old Martini, and I shall die in peace!—referring of course to the rifle that for a period of years up to 1890 had been the official weapon of Tommy Atkins. I made the most of so obvious a lead, and before introducing the next number on the program thanked the singer for his dramatic rendering of so fine a story.
"But, my friends," said I, "that ballad saddens me in more respects than one. I have long believed in international brotherhood. In common with my friend Conan Doyle and others who have advocated the hands stretched across the sea, I have been in sympathetic accord with the idea of universal brotherhood; but now and then certainlittle things crop up that, insignificant in themselves, show us none the less how radically far apart we really are. This splendid old British warrior calling for his Martini is a case in point, and I am sure my own compatriots here to-night at any rate will realize the vast gulfs of separation that exist between the Britons and ourselves when I ask them what they would bring to a dying American soldier, delirious or otherwise, if he were to call for a Martini."
The point took with the Americans; but the others, charming Frenchmen, delightful Germans, cultivated Englishmen, stared at me in stolid silence, and one or two of them shook their heads as if bewildered. It was a hard situation, and I slammed the rest of the evening through without further attempts at playfulness, retiring to the seclusion that my cabin granted an hour later, resolved never again to serve as presiding elder at a vaudeville show either on land or sea.
I felt almost as solemnly embarrassed as I did one evening in Pennsylvania, later, when my lecture was opened with prayer and I heard a good clergyman begging the Lord to "show His mercy upon the audience gathered here," to "protectthem from all suffering, and in His infinite wisdom, if it were His will, to enable the speaker of the evening to rise to his opportunity."
But there was an after result of that Martini jest which more than made up for the depression that followed its failure to strike home. I write of it, however, with some diffidence; for I am convinced that some reader somewhere will observe that the incident is only another variation of Senator Depew's famous tale of the Englishman who wanted to know what really was the matter with the mince pie. As a matter of fact it is the twin brother of that famous anecdote; but, while I am perfectly willing to think the Depew story really happened, I know that mine did, and I therefore record it.
The morning following the impromptu concert I was pacing the deck of the steamer when one of the more distinguished passengers aboard, an English army officer, who occupied at that time, and still holds, an important post in British military circles, stopped me.
"Mr. Bangs," he said, holding out his hand, "I want to thank you for a charming evening last night, and to express my admiration for the delightfulway in which you carried off your difficult honors. It was really most interesting."
"Thank you, General," said I. "That is very nice to hear. I thought it fell rather flat."
"Not at all, not at all," he rejoined; "though, to speak quite frankly, there was one of your jests that I—I—I didn't really get. What humor you have, sir, I think I appreciate. During a period of convalescence in the Transvaal somebody sent me a copy of your 'House Boat on the Styx,' and I—I—I found it very amusing; but this joke last night—after the little chap had sung that ballad—about the dying veteran you know—it quite escaped me. Er—what would they bring an American soldier who called for a Martini?"
"Well, General," said I, restraining an impulse to be amused, "I might explain, and explain and explain the point to you, giving you a chart in full detail, exploiting the theory of the thing as fully as possible, without satisfactory results. It is a case where an object lesson will demonstrate in a minute what no amount of abstract argument could convey in a year. If you will come with me into the smoking room, I'll show you exactly whatnine out of ten people in America would give to a soldier crying aloud for a Martini."
"But what was the point of this little joke last night?""But what was the point of this little joke last night?"
We repaired accordingly to the smoking room, and in response to my order the steward shortly placed two misty Martini cocktails before us.
"There you are, General," said I, smiling, "that's what!"
He gazed at the Martinis a moment, and then he fixed his handsome eyes on me. There was a merry twinkle in them, and after hehad swallowed the object lesson he leaned over with a broad smile and spoke.
"I am very much afraid, Mr. Bangs," said he, "that that idea you Americans have that we British are sometimes a trifle sluggish in our perception of the subtler points of an American jest, bristling as they often do with latent significance, is not altogether without justification. In order to show you how completely, how fully, I appreciate the excellence of your witticism I would suggest thatwe have two more."
I draw no conclusions of an invidious nature from this little episode; for I recall with pain, and some contrition, an American audience in a prohibition section of one of our Eastern States before whom I had the hardihood to tell that story on a hot summer night three years ago, only one of whose six hundred members saw the point, and he didn't dare laugh for fear that by doing so he might risk his reputation for sobriety—or so he informed me for my consolation later in the evening as he and I zig-zagged together down an ice-covered mountain-road to the railway station in a rattling motor car driven by a chauffeur who had apparently confounded his own stomach with the gasoline tank.
One's democracy receives a pretty severe test on the road, and I am indeed sorry for the man who is always so solicitous for his own dignity that the free and easy habits of the American of Today affront him. The lecture platform is no place for what Doctor Johnson's friend Richard Savage would doubtless in these days have characterized as "the tenth transmitter of a foolish pride."
A people like ours, made up of a hundred million sovereigns, and actuated for the most part, in their social intercourse at least, by a spirit of fraternity, mixed with a very decided inclination to be facetious, forms a somewhat bristling environment for the supersensitively self-centered. If such a one contemplates the invasion of the lyceum territory, as a friend and brother let me advise him to spend at least a year in some social settlementwhere he may be inoculated with sundry useful social germs, as a preventive of much misery ahead. He must get used to much familiarity of a sudden sort, and realize fully that our American world, while it respects ability, and withholds from it no atom of its due appreciation, is in no particular a respecter of mere persons.
In respect to "having to be shown" we are by a large majority "from Missouri," and it will never do for the lyceumite to try to hedge himself about with any fences of false dignity. The palings of those fences may be sharp, and connected with barbed wire; but the American citizens of the hour walk through them, or vault them, as easily as if they were not there. And it is all very harmless too; for no man's real dignity has ever yet suffered from any assaults other than his own.
I recall an incident of my travels in the Dakotas some years ago that brought this situation home to me very vividly. I was on my way to a county seat in one of those vast twin commonwealths on a rather sluggish way train, and found among my fellow travelers three very live human beings who had apparently just met after a long separation. One of them was a rather stout little man, with afresh, boyish face; another was a tall and spare ferret-eyed individual who might have posed as an acceptable model for a picture of Sherlock Holmes; and the third was a well built young giant, a veritable blond Samson, full of the boisterous spirits of young manhood.
The three sat across the aisle from me, and inasmuch as Nature had not seen fit to supply their vocal organs with soft pedals, or pianissimo stops, I became an unwitting, though not unwilling, listener to their conversation. It was amusing, clean, and bristling with good-fellowship, though not wholly Chesterfieldian in character. Finally the Sherlock Holmes man, turning to the stout little chap, who was sitting next to the car window, observed:
"Well, old man, you're lookin' a heap better than ya did the last time I saw ya."
"Yes," said the stout little man, "I'm feeling better. I've been on a diet for the past six months."
And here the stalwart young blond Samson playfully interposed. "Well, it was about time, ya big, fat stuff!" he said. "Ya had a stummick on ya big enough for sixteen men." Whereuponhe proceeded to jam the little man's derby hat down over his eyes.
Ordinarily this would be regarded as a rather commonplace, unenlightened conversation; but its application to my point came the following morning, when, having several hours to spare before departing for other scenes, I went into the county courthouse to watch the litigation in progress there. It was a scene full of interest, and the proceedings were conducted on a plane of dignity quite in keeping with the highest traditions of the bench, everything going on decently and in order. But the interesting and possibly amazing thing about it to me was the sight that greeted my eyes in the person of the Sherlock Holmes man of the day before, conducting an eloquent argument before the stout little man of the train, who was no less a person than—the Presiding Justice! And the young giant who had called him a big, fat stuff, and jammed his hat down over his eyes, was thecourt stenographer!
I had the pleasure of lunching with all three of them later in the day, and a finer lot of true-blue American citizens I have not met anywhere else, before or since.
If one has any purely physical peculiarity of an obvious nature, he must get reconciled to having it used as a hook for his discomfiture, or his delectation, according as his own attitude toward the slings and arrows of life causes him to take them. In my own case perhaps the most conspicuous personal idiosyncrasy I present physically to the eye of the casual beholder is an almost abnormal lack of hirsute adornment; always a favorite point of attack by facetiously inclined chairmen, by whom I have been eloquently likened to the "imperishable Alps" for that I lacked "vegetation" on my "summit," to a "heliograph on the Hills of Letters," and by one I was called "the legitimate successor of the lamented Bill Nye, the Original Billiard Ball on the Pool Tables of Modern Humor."
Most of my delectable misadventures in respect to this deficiency have naturally occurred in the barber shops of the nation, and it has been surprising to me, as an interested student of American humor, to note how full of variety are the spontaneous outbursts of the Knights of the Razor everywhere upon that seemingly barren topic.
One barber in Wisconsin, to whom I facetiouslycomplained that he should not charge me full price for a haircut when there was so little to cut, came back immediately with, "Ah, but you see I had to work overtime to find it!"
Another in Boston, after shaving me, inquired, "Now how do you want your hair brushed?"
"Brush it back like that young man's in the next chair," said I, pointing to a Harvard student with a perfect mop of hair, resembling a huge yellow chrysanthemum, which the neighboring artist was brushing laboriously back from the youthful forehead.
"Humph!" said my friend. "I'll try; but, take it from me,it'll take a blistering long time to brush your hair back!"
But the readiest bit of repartee that I recall in respect to this shortcoming was that of a Philadelphia barber two years ago, who was trying to make me presentable for my audience that night in the Witherspoon Hall University extension course, where I was to deliver a series of lectures on American humorists.
"Now," said he, running his hand over the back of my head after he had attended to my other needs, "how do you want your hair fixed?"
"In silence, and without humor," said I. "I am approaching my fiftieth year in this world, and since thirty I have been as you see me now. In the course of those twenty intervening years I have heard about every joke on the subject of baldness that the human mind has been able to conceive at least fifty thousand times."
"I guess that's right," said he. "You are pretty bald, ain't you?"
"I am, and I am not at all ashamed of it," I returned. "My baldness has been honestly acquired. I have not lost my hair in dissipation, or by foolish speculation, but entirely through generosity of spirit.I have given my hair to my children."
"Gee!" he ejaculated with fervor. "You must have the divvle of a large family!"
I made use of that incident in my lecture that night as a convincing demonstration that whatever had happened to the humor of the professional humorist, as a natural gift of the American people that branch of humor known as repartee was still running strong.
Intentionally or otherwise, I think the best joke ever perpetrated upon me in respect to my lack ofcapillary attraction occurred at Bellingham, in the State of Washington, up near the Vancouver line, back in 1906, when I made my first trip to the Pacific Coast. I was the victim that season of a particularly distressing window card, got up in a great hurry from a most unsatisfactory photograph, and designed to arouse interest in my coming. It greeted me with grinning pertinacity everywhere I looked.
I am skeptic on the subject of window cards anyhow. I could never convince myself that printed cuts are really effective instruments of publicity, and I vow with all the fervor of which I am capable that they are a nuisance and a trial to what the public call "the talent." I also know that in at least one instance they bade fair to work adversely to my interests, as was shown in a letter received by me many years ago from an unknown correspondent in Kansas City, who addressed me thus:
My Dear Sir,—I inclose herewith a copy of a so-called photograph of yourself published in this morning's Kansas City "Star," and I want to know if you really look like that. The reason I write to inquire is that yesterday was my little boy's birthday, and his grandmother presented him with a copy of one of your books. I haven't had time to read the book myself; but I have taken it away from Willie,and shall keep it pending your reply,for if you do look like this, you are no fit person to write for children.
My Dear Sir,—I inclose herewith a copy of a so-called photograph of yourself published in this morning's Kansas City "Star," and I want to know if you really look like that. The reason I write to inquire is that yesterday was my little boy's birthday, and his grandmother presented him with a copy of one of your books. I haven't had time to read the book myself; but I have taken it away from Willie,and shall keep it pending your reply,for if you do look like this, you are no fit person to write for children.
I must confess that a single glance at the muddy reproduction of a long discarded photograph convinced me that my naïve correspondent was not a whit more careful of his parental responsibilities than the situation justified. I might readily have passed, if that photograph were accurate, for a professional gambler, or a highly probable future candidate for the Rogues' Gallery.
But, whether the platform worker is helped or retarded by this indiscriminate plastering of public places with his counterfeit presentment, committees seem to think it necessary, and we therefore provide them with the most pulchritudinous pictorial composition that Art, unrestrained by Nature, can produce.
But the one I used in 1906 was a most unflattering affair, and I grew heartily sick of it as my tour progressed. At Bellingham it was oppressively omnipresent. It seemed as if I had erupted all over the place. It greeted me in the railway station when I descended from the train. Two of them hung in the hotel office when I entered, and as I walked up the street after luncheon I overheardsundry unregenerate youths remark, "There he goes!" and "That's him!" and "Oh, look who's here!" derisively, until I could almost have wrung every juvenile neck in town. On one corner I found it in a laundry window, labeled, "John Kendrick Bangs at the Normal School Tonight," and placed immediately beneath this was a brown paper placard inscribed in great, red-chalk letters with the words, "HELP WANTED." Farther up the street I found it in a millinery shop window, pinned beneath a composite creation of Bellingham and Paris which was not particularly becoming to my pictorial style.
But the climax was reached when I found it in a drug-store window, where the window dresser had placed it over another placard, the advertisement of a well known patent remedy. My picture covered the whole of the patent medicine placard except its essential advertising line at the bottom, and as I stood there staring at myself through that plate glass window my grinning countenance stared back at me unflinchingly, and underneath it was the legend,
HIRSUTERINE DID THIS AND WECAN PROVE IT.
In gratitude to the perpetrator of that horrific joke let me say that I have used the incident as the opening anecdote in my Salubrity lecture ever since, and I really believe it has had as much to do with making mepersona gratato my audiences as any other feature of my discourse.
"My grinning countenance stared back at me unflinchingly.""My grinning countenance stared back at me unflinchingly."
A tolerably effective arrow that struck fairly on the bullseye of over-self-appreciation came to me out of the dark, of a well intended compliment in a prominent New Jersey city several years ago. I had lectured before a fairly appreciative audience, seated conspicuously in the midst of which was a young manwhom I recognized as the very courteous and affable room clerk of the hotel at which I was stopping. He and his friends formed a nucleus of appreciation which more than compensated me for the barbed glances of one or two unwilling auditors dragged thither reluctantly, probably from more alluring indulgences in bridge or draw poker at their clubs. Both my heart and head expanded under the influence of their continuous enthusiasm, and my emotions of satisfaction were intensified when on my walk back to the hotel I heard the friendly room clerk, stalking just ahead of me, exclaiming enthusiastically:
"Didn't I tell you he'd be good? By George! I read one of his books once, and I've wanted to see him ever since."
It was all very nice, and I hugged the pleasant intimations of his remark to my breast all through my dreams that night. But the morning brought disillusionment, and a mighty poignant shaft entered into the soul of me. After eating my breakfast I stepped to the hotel desk to pay my bill, and was there beamingly greeted by the room clerk.
"Well, Mr. Bangs," said he, with outstretchedhand, "that was a fine talk you gave us last night, and I enjoyed every minute of it. But I knew it would be good."
"Thank you," said I, my chest expanding a bit.
"I've only read one of your books," he went on; "but it gave me a lead on you. I don't want to flatter you, but—well,it was the funniest book I ever read, and I've been wondering if you would write your autograph in it for me."
"Surely," said I, not only willing to please him, but quite anxious to see which of my books it was that had filled him with such enthusiasm.
"I have it here," said he, taking the volume out of a drawer.
"Good!" said I. "Let's have it."
He handed it to me, and I glanced at it.It was a copy of Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat, not to Mention the Dog!"
"No flattery at all," said I, my growing conceit falling back to par. "I'm glad you like it."
And then for the first and only time in my life I committed forgery. I took the book to a writing table near at hand, and inscribed the flyleaf with "Appreciatively yours, Jerome K. Jerome." Andas I left the hotel the last sight that greeted my eyes was my kindly deputy assistant host studying that inscription with a look of extreme bewilderment on his screwed-up countenance.
Apropos of this incident it is rather curious how frequently my name and that of Jerome K. Jerome have been confounded. I have always considered it a compliment, and I sincerely hope Jerome himself will not mind it. I suppose the identity of our initials J. K. is responsible for it, and possibly the fact also that Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat" and my own "House-Boat on the Styx" were published at about the same time. One of the most amusing incidents based upon this confusion of identity occurred in California last spring. I was spending Easter Sunday at that remarkable hostelry, the Mission Inn at Riverside, feeling that in some way despite of my desserts I had got into heaven, and quite convinced that I could stand an eternity of it if the particular atmosphere of that wonderful Sunday were typical of life there. The inspiring Easter sunrise service on Mount Rubidaux was over, and I was resting comfortably in the office when a young woman paused at my side, and said,
"You will excuse me for speaking to you, sir, but your face bothers me."
"I am very sorry, Madame," said I, "but it has bothered me too for over fifty years."
"Oh, I don't mean that way," she answered quickly. "I mean that I can't place it."
"Well," said I, trying to smile, "you really don't have to. It is already located."
"But I don't know where I have seen it before," she pleaded.
"Nor do I," said I, "but I think I can reassure you on that point. Knowing myself as I do I can assure you that it must have been in a perfectly respectable place."
"I wish you would stop fooling," she retorted, a trifle impatiently. "I want to know who you are. You see I'm of a rather nervous temperament, and when I see a familiar face and cannot remember the name of the individual who—er—who goes with it, sometimes it keeps me awake all night."
"It would be too bad to have that happen," said I, "and inasmuch as I am not at all ashamed of my name I shall be delighted to tell you what it is. It is Bangs—John Kendrick Bangs."
"Oh—I know," she cried, her perplexity fading away, "You are the man who wrote 'Three Men in a Boat.'"
And the dear lady seemed to be so pleased over the honor of meeting so distinguished an author that I really hadn't the heart to undeceive her.
I have always thought of my young friend the room-clerk far more kindly than of another New Jersey host whose airy nonchalance in what was to me a moment of some seriousness struck me as being almost arctic in its frigid non-acceptance of responsibility for untoward conditions. I had put up overnight in his jerry-built hostelry, and all had gone well until breakfast time. I was seated at table enjoying my frugal repast, when without warning from anybody I found myself the sudden recipient of a heavy blow on the top of my head, and upon emerging from the rather dazed psychological condition in which the blow left me discovered that I was covered from head to foot with plaster, and that my poor but honest poached egg had become a scrambled one, mixed with the impalpable dust of a shattered bit of molding.
A glance heavenward showed whence my trouble had come. A section of the ceiling about fourfeet square had come loose, and had landed upon me. I could think of no better way to voice my protest against such an intolerable intrusion upon my rights of privacy at mealtimes than by giving the hotel manager an object lesson then and there of what was going on under his roof. So I rose from the table and walked directly to the office just as I was.
"Great Scott!" said my host, as I loomed up before him like a glorified ash heap. "What's happened to you?"
"A part of your condemned old ceiling has fallen on me, that's what!" I sputtered somewhat wrathfully.
"Oh, that's it, eh?" he replied, with a smiling grace which I hardly appreciated at the time. "Well, we don't do that for everybody, Mr. Bangs," he added; "but seeing it's you we won't make any extra charge."
I thanked him for his consideration. "I'd like to buy this hotel," I added.
"Well, it's for sale," said he. "Like to run it yourself?"
"No," said I. "I thought it might be some fun to buy a Panama fan and blow it down."