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From Pillar to Post

[98] <h2>VI</h2> <h3>BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENTS</h3> 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[99] 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."[100] <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/gs11.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="443" alt=""The lecturer must deliver the goods!"" title="" /> "The lecturer must deliver the goods!"</div> Occasionally, however, an ostentatiously emphatic expression of disapproval gives the man on the platform a chance to redeem himself. It is told of Henry Ward Beecher that on one occasion something he had said proved so offensive to one of his auditors, who happened to be sitting in the front row of a large and reverberant auditorium, that the individual rose bruskly and walked out. As a sort of underscoring of his disapproval the protesting soul was aided by a pair of new shoes that squeaked so audibly as he strode down the aisle that they distracted the attention of everybody.[101] Mr. Beecher immediately stopped short, and waited until the dissatisfied person had faded through the doorway and the last echo of his suffering boots had died away, and then, with a benignant smile, recited that good old nursery rime so dear to the hearts of our childhood: Rings on his fingers, And bells on his toes; He shall have music Wherever he goes. It was a bit of ready repartee that captivated the audience, and if there were present any others who later found themselves in a protesting mood it is pretty certain that they waited for a safer occasion upon which to manifest it. Mr. Beecher on his feet was never a man to be trifled with. On a stumping campaign myself a number of years ago I was confronted by a somewhat similar condition. An allusion to a statesman whom I greatly admired elicited a decided hiss from a group of hostiles seated under the gallery of a rural opera house. I silenced the hiss by pausing in my remarks and appealing to the janitor to "turn off that steam radiator," since the hall was evidently already too hot for the comfort of some[102] of the audience. It was not particularly deft, but it served the purpose, and we heard no more from that particular quarter for the rest of the evening. It is a safer rule, however, for the speaker to try to conciliate the hostile element, and it has been a rule of mine for the last five years to endeavor to locate such centers of frigidity as may be found before me, and then direct all my energies toward "thawing them out." Popular as the platform is in all parts of the country to-day, there is always present in every community a small leaven of at least reluctant men who are dragged unwillingly to the lecture halls by their enthusiastic wives, when, if they were only permitted to have their own way, they would be resting tranquilly at home, slippers on feet, feet on fender, book or favorite newspaper in hand, and a sweet-scented briarwood pipe for company. It is not difficult to locate these sufferers. They are such conscious martyrs that they immediately betray themselves, and as a rule while my chairmen are introducing me to my audiences I scan the rows of faces before me in search of them. They have certain unmistakable earmarks that[103] betray them to the sympathetic eye—which, with all due modesty, I may claim mine to be; for, while I love lecturing, being lectured to or at, as the case may be, bores me to extinction. I am like those doctors who rejoice in the opportunity to amputate another man's leg, but would not give seven cents to cut off one or both of their own. The first of these earmarks is the expression of the face, which is either one of hopeless resignation, or full of lowering, one might almost say vengeful, contempt, as if the owner of the face were calling down inwardly all the wrath of Heaven upon the lecturer in particular, and the whole lyceum movement in general. With both these expressions go arms tightly folded across the breast, as though the sufferer were really trying hard to hold himself in. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/gs12.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="241" alt=""They may 'go to sleep in his face.'"" title="" /> "They may 'go to sleep in his face.'"</div> [104] The second almost certain manifestation is in the physical relation of the sufferer to the chair in which he sits. He makes it bear the heavy material burden of his despair by sitting not as Nature intended that he should sit, but as nearly upon the small of his back as the available space at his disposal will permit. If he occupy an aisle seat, he sits wholly on the small of his back, with his legs crossed, and his hands tightly clasped across his freer knee. Once located, this man is the special person that I go after. It becomes my persistent effort, and in so far as I can master the situation my determination, to win his reluctant heart. If I can only get him sitting up like a vertebrate animal, using his spine like a prop instead of like a hammock, and returning my gaze with a gleam of interest, I am happy. If I can get him not only to sit up but to lean forward with his head cocked to one side, much as a horse will cock its ears when something unexpected comes within the range of its vision, I feel that I have scored a triumph. I should say that at a rough guess in eight cases out of ten the effort is successful, although there have been ninth and tenth cases that have chilled me to[105] the marrow, and sent me home with an uncomfortable sense of failure. My lamented friend, the late R. K. Munkittrick, an American humorist who never really received the full measure of appreciation to which his delicious humor entitled him, once when we were "reading" together one night at Albany, scoring a fiasco so complete that we could only laugh over it, put the situation before me in terms so wholly comprehensive that I have never forgotten it. "See that red-headed chap in the fourth row?" he whispered, as the chairman was indulging in some extended remarks concerning our greatness to which we could never hope to live up. "You mean the pall bearer with the green necktie?" I asked. "Yes," said Munkittrick, "he's the one." "Well—what of him?" said I. "Oh, nothing," grinned Munkittrick, "but I'll bet you seven dollars and forty-seven cents he's bet the boxoffice fifty cents we can't make him laugh." I may record with due humility that if good old[106] Munkittrick's surmise was correct our highly chromatic but otherwise funereal friend won his bet. I doubt we could have moved him with dynamite. But these gentlemen serve a highly useful purpose. They keep us with our feet on the earth, and prevent us from soaring too high in our own estimation. Another effective factor in this disciplinary element in platform work is the "back-handed" compliment that leaves the party of the second part suspended like Mahomet's coffin, midway between heaven and earth, and in some uncertainty as to exactly where "he is going to get off." I have rejoiced in several such. The great State of Pennsylvania, which has "officially" done so much for the platform by its liberal appropriations for teachers' institutes, enabling the school centers to secure the services of speakers of high cost who would otherwise be beyond their reach, is responsible for one of these. It occurred some three years ago, and grew out of an unexpected summons by wire from one of the largest cities of the Quaker State asking me to "fill in" for Dr. Griggs, who because of sudden[107] indisposition was unable to meet his engagement in a large and important course there. It was an emergency call, which fortunately found me disengaged, and willing to serve. The chairman of the occasion was a delightful individual, with a considerable fund of dry humor, and his introduction was a gem of subtle wit. It occupied about fifteen minutes, the first five of which were devoted to matters pertaining to the course; the second five to a well deserved eulogy of Dr. Griggs for his inspiring lectures and the uplifting nature of his work, coupled with an expression of the intense disappointment which he, the chairman, knew the audience must feel on learning that the good doctor could not be present. I thought he rather rubbed the "disappointment" idea in a little too vigorously; but I tried not to show it, and sat through that part of the chairman's remarks with the usual stereotyped smile of satisfaction at hearing a colleague so highly spoken of. This done, the chairman launched himself upon a four-minute discourse upon what he called "The Age of Substitution." "You know, my friends," said he, "that this[108] great age in which we live is so rich in resources that at times when we cannot immediately lay our hands on some particular article we happen to want there is always to be found somewhere a just as good as article to take its place. If you desire a particular kind of porous plaster to soothe an all-too-self-conscious spine, and the druggist you call upon for aid does not chance to have it in stock, he invariably has another at hand which he assures you will do quite as well. So it is with the nerve foods, breakfast foods, corn plasters, face powders, facial soaps, suspenders, corsets, liver pills, and lecturers. If we haven't what you want, we have something just as good in this Age of Substitution. So is it with us to-night. While we may not receive the all-wool-and-a-yard-wide spiritual uplift that Dr. Griggs would have given us, we are privileged to listen to the near-silk humor of a substitute, who, the committee in charge venture to hope, will prove to be just as good as the other. We of course don't know that it will be; but we live in hope as well as on it, and, lacking the great satisfaction that I had expected to be mine in presenting Dr. Griggs to you this evening, it still gives me a certain melancholy pleasure[109] to introduce to this audience that highly mercerized near-speaker, Mr. Just-as-Good-as K. Bangs, on whose behalf I bespeak your charity and your tolerance." As a rule I like to play a little with my chairmen; but I deemed it unwise on this occasion to "monkey with a buzz saw," and plunged directly into the work in hand without venturing upon the usual facetious preliminaries. I felt that I had enough work cut out for me already, and for an hour and a half exerted myself strenuously to be just as good as I could be, neither more nor less. Then, when it was all over, and my case was in the hands of the jury, a charming woman, with a delectable smile on her face, came rushing up to the platform. She seized my hand and shook it vigorously as she spoke. "Oh, Mr. Bangs," she said with an enthusiasm so delightful that I listened eagerly for the honeyed words to come, "we are so glad you came! You have made our disappointment complete!" Another incident I prefer not to locate other than by saying that it was in the West—and where the West begins no man may say. I know a New York lady to whom it begins at the Cortlandt[110] street opening of Mr. McAdoo's Hudson River tubes, who has no notion at all that anything lies beyond save the names of a few cities that mean nothing to her, and the Rocky Mountains. With others it begins on the banks of the Mississippi. Once in the heart of Iowa, when I was speaking to a young college student there on the glorious opportunities of the West, in the hope of making him see how much I appreciated the wonderful country in which he lived, the young man staggered me with the reply: "Yes, sir, I believe you are right. My father wants me to go West when I get through with my work here." So it would seem that the old rime about the little insect— Every flea has a little flea to bite him, And so it goes ad infinitem— may very well be adapted to the uses of those good souls who now and then try to reach the infinity of westernness. But there is another poem more directly applicable to some conclusion as to the problem, which I like to think of in moments when I am reflecting upon its cordial welcome to me:[111] Out where the hand clasp's a little stronger, Out where a smile dwells a little longer— That's where the West begins. Out where the sun is a little brighter, Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter, Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter— That's where the West begins. Out where the world is in the making, Where fewer hearts with despair are aching— That's where the West begins. Where there's more of singing and less of sighing; Where there's more of giving and less of buying, And a man makes friends without half trying— That's where the West begins. The author of those lines, who was, I believe, Arthur Chapman of Denver, seems to me to have come closer to a solution of the problem than any other. For our own purposes just now, however, let us say that the incident to which I wish to refer took place in that part of the West which lies between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate. My audience in this particular spot was delightfully responsive; so much so that I was all of two hours in the delivery of a lecture that ordinarily takes me an hour and a quarter to deliver. It was as exhilarating as a cross-country run, with turf and skies just right. But for the pauses made necessary by the interruptions in appreciation[112] I should have galloped across the finish line in less than an hour. So stimulating in fact was the readiness of the good people before me to take what I had to say and run away with it, that, while I was immortally tired when I went out upon the platform, when I finished I could have started in and done it all over again with zest. But even with so pleasing a background of responsiveness, there was one young man seated in the front row who was a source of particular pleasure to me. He was a rather distinguished looking youth, with flashing eyes, and somewhat longish blond hair, and a physique that suggested a modern Viking. There was something in his face that suggested the scholarly habit—occasionally his expression was wistfully questioning. His eyes never left my face while I was speaking, and his physical attitude, forward-leaning, and a trifle tense, seemed to betoken an interest in what I had to say that was more than gratifying, and his mouth was kept half open, ever ready for action. If there was to be anything to laugh at, he at least was not going to be caught napping, or in any way unprepared, if by keeping his mouth[113] open he could remove all obstacles that would have prevented the easy flow of his mirth. And his laugh! I wish I might have a rubber record of that laugh to secrete in an automatic machine located somewhere in the middle of my lecture halls, so that in response to the pressure of an electric button it could be let loose at certain psychological moments. It was as infectious a laugh as I ever listened to, and there were times when its contagion brought me perilously close to seeming to laugh at my own jokes—which is a dangerous thing for a lecturer to do, and contrary to the technic of the "business," which requires humorous periods to be delivered with a face solemn to the point of the funereal. It had really musical modulations, rising from pianissimo to fortissimo on the wings of nicely graded crescendos, and returning whence it had come with a sort of rippling gurgle that was mighty fetching. Finally not only was nothing I had in mind lost upon him, but he actually appeared to discover subtleties of wit in my discourse of whose presence I had not myself had the slightest suspicion. It is hardly necessary to say that he was pleasing[114] unto my soul, and naturally enough I spoke of him afterward to my chairman. "Well, Mr. Bangs," said the chairman as we walked back to the hotel together after the lecture was over, "what did you think of your audience to-night? Some responsiveness there, all right, eh?" I was impulsively enthusiastic enough to say that I thought it was a "corking good audience." "If they were all like that," said I, "this work would be as easy as cutting calves-foot jelly with an ax." "I thought you liked them," said he. "Our people here are appreciative, and they believe the laborer is worthy of his hire in showing it." "I'll put Blanksville down in my red-letter book," said I. "But tell me who and what is that rather distinguished looking young man with the longish blond hair and snappy eyes, who sat in the aisle seat of the front row next to the white-haired old lady with an audiphone? He had a wistful sort of face, and—" "Oh, I know who you mean," said the chairman. "He's So-and-So. What about him—he didn't bother you, I hope?"[115] "On the contrary," said I, "I loved him. He was about the most appreciative chap I ever talked to. He fairly hung on every word I spoke, and when it came to a funny point I'm blest if he didn't meet me more than halfway!" "Yes," said the chairman, "he would. He's half-witted." My swelling head immediately resumed its normal proportions, and when I left Blanksville the following morning the only discomfort I found in wearing my regular hat was that in some way or other it seemed to have grown a little too large for me, and showed a tendency to settle down over my ears. I have nevertheless comforted myself with the thought that sometimes the difference between half-wittedness and genius is so slight to the eye of the familiar beholder that wise men are not infrequently believed by their neighbors to be fools. My young friend after all may have been a poet, and, like some prophets, "without honor in his own country." <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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