From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book

I did not worry much over the situation, however; for on several other occasions when I found myself penniless in the West and in the South I had not found any trouble in getting some one to cash my check. So, after assuring myself that my train would be held there for at least two or three hours before returning to Columbus, I set off blithe-heartedly to secure the replenishment of my pocket. In the heavy rain I walked up the main thoroughfare of the little city, and to my great relief espied a national bank on one of the four corners of its square. I walked boldly in and addressed the cashier, telling him my story with a few "well chosen words."

"I thought possibly," said I, as he listened without too great a display of interest, "that in view of all these circumstances you would be willing to take a chance on me, and cash my check for twenty-five dollars."

"Why, my dear sir," he replied, "this is a bank!"

I restrained a facetious impulse to tell him that I was surprised to hear it, having come in under the impression that it was a butcher shop, where I could possibly buy an umbrella, or a much needed eight-day clock.

"I know," I contented myself with saying, smiling the while. "That's why I came here for money."

"Well, you've come to the wrong place," he blurted out. "We are not running an asylum to give first aid to the injured!"

"Thank you, sir," I replied. "You are quite right, and perhaps I should not have asked such a favor – but I'll tell you one thing," I added. "To-morrow or next day when the Governor of this State issues his appeal for aid for the stricken, as he surely will, you will find that the financial men in that part of the world where I come from are running just such institutions, and when that golden horde for the relief of your people pours in from mine I hope it will make you properly ashamed of yourself, if you are not so already."

It was as fruitless as reading a Wordsworth sonnet on nature to a rhinoceros; for all he did was to grunt.

"Humph!" said he, and I walked out.

Another bank was soon found, where I secured not accommodation but a more courteous refusal. The president of the bank was one of the most sympathetic souls I have ever met, and would gladly cash anybody's draft for me; but my own check, that was out of the question. He was a trustee of the funds in his charge – poor chap, apparently without a cent of his own on deposit. However, he was courteous, and vocally sympathetic. He realized very keenly the difficulties of my position, and actually escorted me as far as the door to see me safely to the perils of the pave, expressing the hope that I would soon find some way out of my difficulty. I returned to the train, ate thirty cents' worth of sardines in the dining car, gave the waiter a ten-cent tip, and repaired to the smoking compartment absolutely penniless. A number of others were gathered there, and we naturally fell into discussing the day's adventures.

"Well," said I, "I've just had one of the strangest experiences of my life. I've been in all parts of the United States in the last eight years, and never until to-day have I found a place so poor in sympathy, and easy money, that I couldn't get my check cashed if I happened to need the funds. Why, I've known a Mississippi hotelkeeper who was so poor that his wife had to do all the chambermaid's work in the house, to go out at midnight to borrow twenty-five dollars from a neighbor to help me out; but here, with this flood knocking everything galley west, I can't raise a cent!"

And I went on and narrated my experience with the two national banks as recorded here.

"Well, by George!" ejaculated one of the men seated opposite to me, slapping his knee vigorously as I finished. "I'm an Ohio man, sir, and I blush for the State. I'll cash your check for you on your looks. How much do you want?"

"Twenty-five dollars," said I.

"All right," he said, pulling a well-filled wallet from his pocket, and counting out five five-dollar bills. "There's the stuff."

I thanked him, and drawing my check handed it over to him. He took it, and glanced at the signature.

"What?" he exploded. "The Idiot?"

This was the title of one of my books.

"Guilty!" said I.

"Here, you!" he cried, pulling his wallet again from his pocket, and holding it wide open, displaying a tempting bundle of ten-dollar bills within. "Here – just help yourself!"

And yet there are people in this world who ask if "literature" pays!

About the most Samaritan of the Good Samaritans I ever encountered I met in February last in one of the most flourishing of our northwestern cities. He was a Samaritan with what the modern critic would call a "kick" to him – or at least it struck me that way. As I made my way northward from Minneapolis to fill my engagement there I was seized with a terrific toothache which for the time being destroyed pretty nearly all my interest in life. The offending molar was far back in the region of the wisdom section, and inasmuch as it had been somewhat loose in its behavior for several days I decided to be rid of it. All my efforts to extract it myself were unavailing, and finally after a last desperate effort to pull it out myself I returned to my chair in the Pullman car and informed the Only Muse who upon this trip was Seeing America with me that our first duty on reaching our destination was to find a dentist and get rid of it.

"I hope you will be careful to get the right kind of a man," said she. "We can't afford any quack doctors, you know."

At this moment a charming woman seated on the opposite side of the car leaned over and said, "I do not wish to intrude, but I have seen how you were suffering, and I just overheard your remark. Now my son-in-law is a dentist, and we think he is a good one. He is coming to meet me at the station, and I think possibly he will be willing to help you."

I thanked the lady, and expressed the hope that he would.

On our arrival at the station the young man appeared as was expected, and my kindly chaperone presented the case.

"He has been suffering dreadfully, James," she said, "and I told him you would pull his tooth out for him."

"But, my dear mother," said the young man, "we are in a good deal of a hurry. We have an engagement for to-night. My office is closed, and we are not dressed for – "

"Thanks just the same," said I. "I am sure you would help me if you could – maybe you will do the next best thing. I can't lecture unless I have this confounded thing out."

"Lecture?" said he. "You are not John Kendrick – "

"Yes – I am," said I.

"Oh," said he, "that's different. You are our engagement. Come up to my office, and I'll fix you up in a jiffy."

So we marched five long blocks up to his office, where I was soon stretched out, and the desired operation put through with neatness and despatch.

"Well, doctor," said I as he held the offending molar up before me tightly gripped in his forceps, "you have given me the first moment of relief I have had all day. My debt in gratitude I shall never be able to repay, but the other I think I can handle. How much do I owe you?"

"Nothing at all, Mr. Bangs," he replied. "Nothing at all."

"Oh, that's nonsense, doctor," I retorted. "You are a professional man, and I am a stranger to you – you must charge something."

"Oh, no, Mr. Bangs," said he, smilingly. "You are no stranger to me. I have been reading your books for the past twenty years, and it's a positive pleasure to pull your teeth."

V

A VAGRANT POET

The inimitable and forever to be lamented Gilbert, in one of his delightful songs in Pinafore, bade us once to remember that —

Things are seldom what they seem —Skim-milk masquerades as cream;Highlows pass as patent-leathers;Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers.

The good woman who sang this song – little Buttercup, they called her – was in a pessimistic mood at the moment; for had she not been so she would have reversed the sentiment, showing us with equal truth how sometimes cream masquerades as skim milk, and how underneath the wear and tear of time what outwardly appears to be a "high low" still possesses some of the glorious polish of the "patent leather." Everywhere I travel I find something of this latter truth; but never was it more clearly demonstrated than when on one of my Western jaunts I came unexpectedly upon an almost overwhelming revelation of a finely poetic nature under an apparently rough and unpromising exterior.

It happened on a trip in Arizona back in 1906. My train after passing Yuma was held up for several hours. Ordinarily I should have found this distressing; but, as the event proved, it brought to me one of the most delightfully instructive experiences I have yet had in the pursuit of my platform labors. As the express stood waiting for another much belated train from the East to pass, the door of the ordinary day coach – in which I had chosen to while away the tedium of the morning, largely because it was fastened to the end of the train, whence I could secure a wonderful view of the surrounding country – was opened, and a man apparently in the last stages of poverty entered the car.

He was an oldish man, past sixty, I should say, and a glance at him caused my mind instinctively to revert to certain descriptions I had heard of the sad condition of the downtrodden Westerner, concerning whose unhappy lot our friends the Populists used to tell us so much. He looked so very poor and so irremediably miserable that he excited my sympathy. Upon his back there lay loosely the time-rusted and threadbare remnant of what had once in the days of its pride and freshness been a frock coat, now buttonless, spotted, and fringing at the edges. His trousers matched. His neck was collarless, a faded blue polka-dotted handkerchief serving as both collar and tie. His hat suggested service in numerous wars, and on his feet, bound there for their greater security with ordinary twine, were the uppers and a perforated part of the soles of a one-time pair of congress gaiters. As for his face – well, it brought vividly to mind the lines of Spenser —

His rawbone cheekes, through penurie and pine,Were shronke into his jawes, as he did never dyne.

The old fellow shambled feebly to the seat adjoining my own, gazing pensively out of the window for a few moments, and then turning fixed a pair of penetrating blue eyes upon me. "Pretty tiresome waiting," he ventured, in a voice not altogether certain in its pitch, as if he had not had much chance to use it latterly.

"Very," said I carelessly. "But I suppose we've got to get used to this sort of thing."

"I suppose so," he agreed; "but just the same for a man in your business I should think it would be something awful. Don't it get on your nerves?"

"What do you know about my business?" I asked, my curiosity aroused.

"Oh," he laughed, "I know who you are. I read one of your books once. I've forgotten what it was about; but it had your picture in the front of it, and I knew you the minute I saw you. Besides I was down in Tucson the other day, and – you're going to lecture at Tucson Tuesday night, aren't you?"

"I am if I ever get there," said I. "At this rate of speed I'm afraid it'll be season after next."

"Well, they'll be ready for you when you arrive," he chuckled. "They've got your picture plastered all over the place. It's in every drug-store and saloon window in the town. They've got it tacked onto every tree, hydrant, hitching post, billboard, and pump, from the railway station out to the university and back. I ain't sure that there ain't a few of 'em nailed onto the ash barrels. You can't look anywhere without seeing John Kendrick Bangs staring out at you from the depths of a photographer's arm chair. Fact is," he added with a whimsical wink, "I left Tucson to get away from the Bangs rash that's broken out all over the place, and, by Jehosaphat! I get aboard this train, and there sets the original!"

I laughed and handed the old fellow a cigar, which he accepted with avidity, biting off at least a quarter of it in his eagerness to get down to business.

"I'm not so bad as I'm lithographed," I said facetiously.

"So I see," he replied, "and it must be some comfort to you to realize that if you ever get down and out financially you've got a first-class case for libel against the feller that lithographed you."

He puffed away in silence for a minute or two, and then leaning over the arm of his seat he re-opened the conversation.

"I say, Mr. Bangs," he said, rather wistfully, I thought, "you must read a great deal from one year's end to another – maybe you could recommend one or two good books for me?"

It was something of a poser. Somehow or other he did not suggest at first glance anything remotely connected with a literary taste, and I temporized with the problem.

"Why, yes," I answered cautiously. "I do run through a good many books in the course of a year; but I don't like to prescribe a course of literary treatment for a man unless I have had time to diagnose his case, and get at his symptoms. You know you mightn't like the same sort of thing that I do."

"That may be so too," he observed coolly. "But we've got some time on our hands – suppose you try me and find out. I'm willin' to testify. Fire ahead – nothin' like a few experiments."

"Well," said I, "personally I prefer biography to any other kind of reading. I like novels well enough; but after all I'd rather read the story of one real man's life, sympathetically presented, than any number of absorbing tales concerning the deeds and emotions of the fictitious creatures of a novelist's fancy. I like Boswell better than Fielding, and Dr. Johnson is vastly more interesting to me than Tom Jones."

"Same here," said my new friend. "That's what I've always said. What's the use of puttin' in all your time on fiction when there's so much romance to be found in the real thing? The only trouble is that there ain't much in the way of good biography written these days – is there?"

"Oh, yes, there is," said I. "There's plenty of it, and now and then we come upon something that is tremendously stimulating. I don't suppose it would interest you very much, but I have just finished a two-volume life of a great painter – it is called 'Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones,' written by his wife."

The old man's face fairly shone with interest as I spoke, and reaching down into the inner pocket of his ragged coat he produced a time-smeared, pocket-worn envelop upon which to make a memorandum, and then after rummaging around in the mysterious recesses of an over-large waistcoat for a moment or two he brought forth the merest stub of a pencil.

"Who publishes that book?" he asked, leaning forward and gazing eagerly into my face.

"Why – the Macmillan Company," I replied, somewhat abashed. "But – would you be interested in that?"

And then came the illuminating moment – I fear its radiance even affected the color of my cheeks when I thought of my somewhat patronizing manner of a moment before.

"I guess I would be interested in that!" he replied with a real show of enthusiasm. "I've always been interested in that whole Preraphaelite movement!"

I tried manfully to conceal my astonishment; but I am very much afraid that in spite of all my efforts my eyes gave my real feelings away. I swallowed hard, and stared, and the old man chuckled as he went on.

"They were a great bunch, that crowd," he observed reflectively, "and I don't suppose the world realizes yet what we owe to them and their influence. Burne-Jones, William Morris, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti – I suppose you know your Rossetti like a book?"

I tried to convey the impression that I was not without due familiarity with and appreciation of my Rossetti; but I began to feel myself getting into deeper water than I had expected.

"There's a lot of fine things in poetry and in paint we'd never have had if it hadn't been for those fellows," the old man went on. "Of course there's a lot of minds so calloused over with the things of the past that they can't see the beauty in anything that takes 'em out of a rut, even if it's really old and only seems to be new. That's always the way with any new movement, and the fellow that starts in at the head of the procession gets a lot of abuse. Take poor old Rossetti, for instance, how the critics did hand it to him, especially Buchanan – the idea of a man like Robert Buchanan even daring to criticize Rossetti's 'Blessed Damozel'! It's preposterous! It's like an elephant trying to handle a cobweb to find out how any living thing could make a home of it. Of course the elephant couldn't!"

I quite agreed that the average elephant of my acquaintance would have found the average cobweb a rather insecure retreat in which to stretch his weary length.

"Do you remember," he went on, "what Buchanan said about those lines? —

"And still she bowed herself and stoopedOut of the circling charmUntil her bosom must have madeThe bar she leaned on warm.

He said those lines were bad, and that the third and fourth were quite without merit, and almost without meaning! Fancy that! —

"Until her bosom must have madeThe bar she leaned on warm

almost without meaning! Suffering Centipedes!" he cried indignantly. "That man must have been brought up on the bottle!"

I think I may truthfully say that from that point on I listened to the old man breathlessly. Buchanan's monograph on "The Fleshly School of Poetry" though wholly out of sympathy with my own views has long been a favorite bit of literary excoriation with me, comparable to Victor Hugo's incisive flaying of Napoleon III, and to have it spring up at me thus out of the alkali desert, through the medium of this beloved vagabond, was indeed an experience. Instead of conversing with my friend, I turned myself into what theatrical people call a "feeder" for the time being, putting questions, and now and then venturing a remark sufficiently suggestive to keep him going. His voice as he ran on gathered in strength, and waxed tuneful and mellow, until, if I had closed my eyes, I could almost have brought myself to believe that it was our much-loved Mark Twain who was speaking with that musical drawl of his, shot through and through with that lyrical note which gave his voice such rare sweetness.

From Rossetti my new-found friend jumped to Whistler – to whom he referred as "Jimmy" – thence to Watts, and from Watts to Ruskin; from Ruskin he ran on to Burne-Jones, and then harked back to Rossetti again.

Rossetti now seemed to become an obsession with him; only it was Rossetti the poet instead of Rossetti the painter to whom he referred. In a few moments the stillness of that sordid coach was echoing to the sonnet of "Lost Days":

"The lost days of my life until to-day,What were they, could I see them on the streetLie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheatSown once for food but trodden into clay?Or golden coins squander'd and still to pay?Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?Or such spill'd water as in dreams must cheatThe undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?I do not see them here; but after deathGod knows I know the faces I shall see —Each one a murder'd self, with low last breath;'I am thyself – what hast thou done to me?''And I – and I – thyself' (lo! each one saith) —'And thou thyself to all eternity.'"

His voice trembled as he finished, and a long silence followed.

"Pretty good stuff, that, eh?" he said, at length.

"Fine!" said I, suddenly afflicted with a poverty of language quite comparable to his own in the way of worldly goods.

"Takes you here, however," said he, tapping his forehead. "Makes you think – and somehow or other I – I don't like to think. I'd rather feel – and when it comes to that it's Christina Rossetti that takes you here." He tapped his left breast over his heart. "She's got all the rest of 'em skinned a mile, as far as I'm concerned. I love that 'Up Hill' thing of hers – remember it? —

"Does the road wind up-hill all the way?Yes, to the very end.Will the day's journey take the whole long day?From morn to night, my friend."But is there for the night a resting-place?A roof for where the slow dark hours begin.May not the darkness hide it from my face?You cannot miss that Inn."Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?Those who have gone before.Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?They will not keep you standing at the door."Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?Of labor you shall find the sum.Will there be beds for me and all who seek?Yea, beds for all who come.

"Ah, me!" he said. "I've got a deal of heartening out of that, and then some day when things don't seem to go just right, I sing for my comfort that song of hers:

"When I am dead, my dearest,Sing no sad songs for me;Plant thou no roses at my head,Nor shady cypress tree:Be the green grass above me,With showers and dew-drops wet,And if thou wilt, remember,And if thou wilt, forget."I shall not see the shadows.I shall not feel the rain.I shall not hear the nightingaleSing on, as if in pain:And dreaming through the twilightThat doth not rise nor set,Haply I may remember,And haply may forget."

The train had long since started on toward our destination, the old fellow discoursing gloriously as we ran along, I utterly unconscious of everything save the marvelous contrasts of that picture – a seemingly wretched vagabond, held in the grip of a relentless poverty, pouring forth out of the depths of a rich mind as rare a spiritual disquisition as I ever remember to have enjoyed. Our destination finally reached, I held out my hand to bid him good-by.

"I can't thank you sufficiently," I said, "for a wonderful hour. I want you to do something for me. You see you have the advantage of me. You know who I am; but I don't know who you are. Won't you tell me your name, that I may add it to the list of my friends?"

The old fellow's eyes filled with tears. He laid his hand gently on my shoulder. "My young friend," he said, his voice growing hoarse and husky again, "who I am is one of the least important things on the face of God's beautiful green earth. What is really important is the kind of man I am. I am one of those unfortunates who started in life at the top of the ladder and moved in the only direction he thought was left open to him."

He seized my hand, gave it a soft, seemingly affectionate pressure, and walked away, leaving me standing alone, and I have not seen nor heard from him since.

VI

BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENTS

In a previous chapter of these rambling reminiscences I have said that I defied any really human man to return from a lecture season in this country in a pessimistic frame of mind. To this defiance I would add another. I defy any man possessed of a hide anywhere short of that of a rhinoceros, or a head of a thickness less than solid ivory, to return from a tour of our country with any greater sense of his own importance than he is entitled to.

There are a good many plain truths spoken in the presence of the lecturer by the good people to whom he is consigned, especially in our delightfully frank West, where they seem to have acquired the knack of drawing a clean-cut distinction between the lecturer as a man and the lecturer as a lecturer. Discourtesy is never encountered anywhere. At least in the ten years of my platform experience, with nearly a thousand public appearances to my credit, I have met with it only twice, and on both occasions in Eastern communities; a proportion so negligible as to amount really to nothing. Hospitality to the man has always been cordial; the attitude toward the lecturer respectful. But in the showing of this respect there is no slopping over, though now and then there is an atmosphere of reserve in its manifestation which serves the lecturer better in the line of criticism, if he is capable of sensing its significance, than any amount of outspoken condemnation.

There is one element in the work of the Man on the Platform that is in itself of the highest disciplinary value, and that is that in all circumstances he must deliver his goods himself. There is nothing vicarious about the operation. No substitute can relieve him of that necessity. The man who writes books, or makes shoes or motor-cars, can sit apart and let others face whatsoever blame may be visited upon a middle man for defects of workmanship; but for the lecturer there is no such happy shifting of responsibility. If people find his discourse dull, they either get up and walk out, or, as the saying is, they "go to sleep in his face."