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

"Humph!" said he gloomily. "It looks prosperous, but —it ain't! It's a bank-made town. The banks got here first, and induced people to come and settle on easy terms, and the terms haven't turned out quite so easy as they might. There's hardly a man in this town that isn't up to his chin in debt."

"Oh, well, what of that?" said I, still resolved to win out on a tolerably hopeless proposition. "Of course debt is a bad thing; but sometimes it acts as a spur. Your people are a bright and brainy looking lot. It won't take them long to settle up."

"Oh, they look bright and brainy," he returned sadly; "but they ain't! There isn't one man in ten 'll understand a half of what you say to them to-night."

"Look here, Doctor!" said I, beginning to wax a trifle chilly myself, especially in the regions of my pedal extremities. "What are you trying to do, discourage me?"

"Oh, no," he replied, with a mournful shake of his head. "If I'd been trying to discourage you, I'd have told you about our lecture hall. It's without any exception the meanest thing of its kind on the American continent. Why," he added, holding out his hands in a gesture of utter despair, "why, if we had a lecture hall that was only halfway decent, we could afford to have somebody out here to talk to us that would be worth listening to!"

The chairman who in the exuberance of his own eloquence forgets the name of the individual he is introducing, even though he has announced that that name is a "household word," is no creature of the imagination, and if the stories that are told of him seem hackneyed, it is not because they are so frequently told, but because they happen so frequently in the experience of all platform speakers, and in almost identical manner. Even so well known a man as Mr. Bryan has suffered from this, one enthusiastic admirer in New York having once, after a skyscraping peroration, led up with climacteric force to the name of "our Peerless Leader, William J. Brennings."

In my own platform experience I have had chairmen come to me at the last moment and confess with most childlike frankness that they have never heard of me before, asking me to help them out because they really didn't know "what in Tophet to say." One individual out on the Pacific Coast approached me one night about ten minutes before the lecture was scheduled to begin, and revealed to me his terrible embarrassment over this latter situation.

"I didn't know until half an hour ago that I was to present you to our people to-night," said he, "and to tell the honest truth, Mr. Bangs, I never heard of you before. Will you please tell me who you are, and what you are, and why you are? And is there anything pleasant I can say about you in introducing you to your audience?"

"Well," said I, "if I had known I was to have the privilege of preparing the obituary notice you are to deliver over my prostrate remains while I lie in state upon the platform to-night, I should have written out something that would have been mighty proud reading for the little Bangses when I sent marked copies of to-morrow morning's papers back East to show them what a great man their daddy is in the West. But I haven't time to tell you the whole story of my past life, and there are certain sections of it I wouldn't tell you if I had. I have been a Democrat in New York and a Republican in Maine."

"You might at least make a suggestion or two to help me out, though," he pleaded.

"Oh, yes," said I, "there are plenty of pleasant things you can say about me. In the first place, you can tell that audience that – "

"Hold on a moment, Mr. Bangs," he interrupted, raising his hand to stop me. "Just one minute, please! You've got to remember that I am a clergyman and must speak the truth!"

I resolved to let him go his own gait, and comforted him by telling him he could say whatever he pleased, and that I would "stand for it."

And I must confess he acquitted himself nobly. In his hands I became one of the Princes of Letters, the titles of whose many books were too well known to need any enumeration of them there, and as for my name – why, it would be an impertinence for him even to mention it, "because, my friends," said he, "I am perfectly well aware that that name is as familiar to you as it is to me."

Another good gentleman in the South, summoned to do duty as chairman at the last moment, sought no aid either from myself or from "Who's Who," trusting, like the good Christian he was, utterly to Holy Writ. He began most impressively with selections from the Book of Genesis. "In the beginning God created the earth," said he, and then he ran lightly over the sequences of created things until he had ushered the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fishes of the sea on to the stage, and thence with an easy jump he came to myself.

"And then, my friends," he said, with an impressive pause, "the Creator felt that He should create something to have dominion over all these things that He knew were good – a creature of heart, a creature of soul, a creature of in-till-ect, and so He made man. My friends, it is such a one that we have with us to-night who will speak to you upon his own subject as only he can do. It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the speaker of the evening, who is too well known to you all to need any further eulogy on my part."

The good gentleman then retired to a proscenium box at the right of the stage, where he at once proceeded to fall asleep, and snored so lustily that everybody in the house was delighted, including myself – although, to tell the truth, I envied him his nap, for I was immortally tired.

One of the dearest of my chairmen was a fine old gentleman in West Virginia, to meet and know whom was truly an inspiration. He was a profound scholar, and had enjoyed the rare privilege in a long and useful life of knowing intimately some of the demigods of American literature. His reminiscences of Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Longfellow, and Hawthorne, and others of our most brilliant literary epoch, were a delight to listen to, and I was sorry when the time came for us to go out upon the platform. It would have been a greater treat for that audience to listen to him than to me, and I heartily wished we might exchange places for the moment. Like a great many others of my chairmen, this gentleman experienced some difficulty in getting the title of my lecture, "Salubrities I Have Met," straight in his mind. More than once during our little chat together he would pause and say:

"What is the title of your talk again? It has slipped my mind."

"Sal-u-bri-ties I Have Met," I would say.

"Tell me again – is it Salubrities or Celebrities?" he would ask.

"Salubrities," I would reply. And then I would spell it out for him, "S-A-L-U-B-R-I-T-I-E-S, Salubrities. Not in any case Celebrities, or you will spoil my opening."

"I'll try to remember it," he would say, with a mistrustful shake of his head as if he feared it was impossible. "It's rather elusive, you know."

"Perhaps I had better write it down on a slip of paper," I said at the last.

"Oh, no," he replied. "I think I have it now – Salubrities, Salubrities, Salubrities – yes – I – I think I have it."

We walked out upon the platform, and the dear old gentleman began a short address so filled with witty and pleasant things that I have ever since wished I could have had a stenographer present to take it down in shorthand. It would have formed an excellent standard of conduct and achievement worthy of any man's striving. And then he came to my subject.

"And to-night, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "Mr. Bangs has come to us to give us his famous lecture on – ahem – on – er – he has come, I say, to give us his inimitable talk on – er – on – er – "

I leaned forward, and tried to give it to him in a stage whisper; but was too late. His impetus carried him on to destruction.

" – his delightful talk on Lubricators He Has Met," said he.

Without any jealousies let me confess that that observation was truly the hit of the evening. The bulk of the audience had been themselves so mystified by the possible significance of the word Salubrities that they knew the title by heart, and we began the evening with a roar of laughter that made us all friends at once. And as a matter of fact no harm was done; for "Lubricators I Have Met" was quite as good a title as the other, for my Salubrities are men and women who have made the world happier, and better, and sweeter, by their kindliness and graciousness, and what in the world could be more fitting than that the people who do that should be called Lubricators?

IX

CHANCE ACQUAINTANCES

The delightful author of that most appealing story, "The Friendly Road," had only to scratch the surface of things a little to find many a golden nugget of friendliness and courtesy in the mines of the human spirit. As I look back on my many thousands of miles of travel in this country I find myself able to say with equal confidence that on the Roads of Steel, and the lanes tributary thereto, where few of us would think to look for such things, I too have found my golden nuggets without more than half-trying to find them. I have already spoken of my friends among the trainmen, to whose fidelity and watchful care I have owed my safe transit and my comfort in many a long and weary stretch. They have been an abundant source of happiness to me; but there have been others still, in whose wit and fraternal companionship, and illuminating discourse, I have found both pleasure and profit. Many of these have been the chance acquaintances of the smoker and the observation car en route.

It does not happen often here in the East that we make friends "by rail." Possibly it is because the distances traversed are comparatively short. Perhaps too it is due to the Eastern Reserve, which is a State of Mind, just as the Western Reserve has become several States of Being. I know that the democratic Westerner traveling in the East finds us apparently cold and unresponsive; though I doubt we are really so. We are merely hurried, and possibly worried; too preoccupied to notice the many little opportunities for friendly intercourse that a railway journey presents.

It is my own impression that the distance to be traveled has largely to do with this difference of manner between the Eastern man and his brother from the West. The average Easterner who has never penetrated the West farther than Sandy Hook has no real conception of the magnificence of those distances about and beyond the Mississippi Valley. At times when for reasons of business or pleasure I have gone from my home in Maine to my encampment in New York, between the hours of six P.M. on a Tuesday, say, and six A.M. of the following Wednesday, I have passed through six separate American commonwealths: but in those Far Western stretches I have time and again spent my full twenty-four hours upon the road without in any wise finding myself subject to the rules and regulations of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Out of this rises, naturally enough, a difference in attitude toward one's fellow travelers. There comes to be a greater sense of a settled community interest on the longer journey, which brings with it greater inclination for social intercourse with one's neighbors of the sleeper.

One of the conspicuous results of my contact with humanity on the road has been that I have come to hold a very high respect for the traveling man; so high indeed that where ten years ago I should probably have spoken of him in the terms of our American vernacular as a drummer, I have now definitely ejected that word from my vocabulary, save in its narrower meaning as applied to that overnoisy person who beats that most unmusical musical instrument, the drum, in our modern bands. These commercial travelers average high in character and in intellect, and the man who keeps his ears open while in their company can hardly fail to learn much from their discourse. The best of them know their own special lines from the ground up, and if my observation of them is correct the very least of them are authorities on human nature.

I do not wish to boast, but I think that if some emergency should arise requiring me to prepare offhand an article on suspenders, straw hats, automobiles, or canned tomatoes, I could qualify as an apparent authority, anyhow, from things I have heard directly from the good fellows pursuing those particular lines, or have overheard in their chats with others, in the smoking cars. More than once I have left a symposium conducted by a group of these gentlemen almost obsessed with the notion that our universities might be better qualified to do their real work in life if the average college professor were able to "get his stuff over" as humanly, as clearly, as entertainingly, and as effectively as do the bulk of these advance agents of the American industrial world. They are, according to their several capacities, full of their subject, saturated with it, enthusiastic over it, and wholly unreluctant when they get even half a chance to reveal their knowledge to a ready listener.

I have met men on the road who were as eloquent on the subject of men's underwear as I should like to be on the necessity of a cheerier spirit in meeting the trials of life, and one effervescent soul on a Pacific Coast trip once held me and mine spell-bound by his remarkable disquisition on the spiritual influence of comfortable shoes, talking for a longer time than I have ever yet listened willingly to a sermon on some seemingly less homely topic. And as authorities on the state of the nation, political, commercial, and spiritual – well, any kind of administration, Republican, Democratic, Progressive, would not do badly were it to summon a congress of these individuals to meet annually at Washington, to confer with it, to inform it, and to lay before it anything having directly or remotely to do with "things as is."

They are by nature diplomats, by instinct orators, and of necessity they are profound students of human nature. They have to be adaptable to circumstance, ready of resource, and full of tolerance. I take off my hat to them, and heartily congratulate the business interests of the United States to-day upon the high character and quality of manhood of this splendid army in the field of commerce.

One of these good fellows several years ago enlivened me for many weary hours on a tedious journey from Kansas City to Minneapolis. The journey was full of annoying mishaps, thanks to a habit some of our Southern and Western railway people have, lacking roses and other fresh flowers, of strewing freight wrecks in my path. It is an expensive tribute; but I would willingly go without it.

On this occasion my friend and I dined together, breakfasted together, characterized our luck in a beautiful commingling of strong language together, and together we watched the painfully slow operations of the train wreckers removing that tributary debris from the tracks. He was buoyant and undismayed by trial, and for hours he orated eloquently upon his subject, which happened to be straw hats. When he got through, had I taken notes, I could have qualified for a University degree upon that subject if I had sought an S. T. D. (Doctor of Straw Tiling).

The vast gulf that separates the near-Panama from the real thing became perfectly clear to me then, if it had never been so before, and I knew how it had come about that a New Yorker could buy a Panama hat for two dollars and fifty cents on Eighth avenue which on Fifth avenue would cost him ten dollars; and why a three-dollar Leghorn purchased in Chicago was inferior to a ninety-five dollar Leghorn manufactured in Newark, New Jersey, was made so obvious that I have worn neither since. His discourse was lucid, picturesque, convincing, and so completely comprehensive that women's hats became no more of a mystery to me than are those which our truck horses wear in midsummer with their ears sticking up through holes in the crown. As we drew near our destination I suddenly observed a smile breaking out on his lips, and a decided twinkle in his eye.

"Good Lord!" said he. "I've only just realized that I have been talking you deaf, dumb, and blind for nearly twenty-four straight hours, without giving you a chance to slide in a word edge-wise. I hope I haven't made you think life's nothing but a hat to me?"

"On the contrary," said I, "I've learned a lot. You've made life worth living."

"I get so infernally interested in my business," said he apologetically, "that sometimes I don't realize that maybe the other fellow has something to say too. I meant to have asked you this morning, but I forgot. What's your line?"

I was seized with a jocular impulse, and I answered instantly "Natural gas."

He looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Natural gas?" he repeated. "That's a queer business. How do you make deliveries?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yep," said I.

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

I enlightened him, and received the inevitable question.

"Whaddyer think of Chicago?"

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

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

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

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

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

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