"I cannot imagine a more disagreeable way of qualifying for the income
tax," said one of America's most noted after-dinner speakers to me when
at a chance meeting he and I were discussing the joys and woes of the
lecture platform. I must admit that in a way I sympathized with him; for
I knew something of the sufferings endured for days and nights prior to
one's own public appearance as an after-dinner or platform speaker.
There was a time many years ago, upon which I look back with wonder that
I ever came through it without nervous prostration, when I suffered
those selfsame mental agonies as the hour approached for the fulfilment
of one of those rash promises which men fond of the sound of their own
voices make months in advance to those subtle flatterers who would lure
them from the easy solitudes of silence into the uneasy limelight of
after-dinner oratory. Not without reason has a certain wit, whose name
is unfortunately lost to fame, referred to the chairs behind the guest
table on the raised platform at revelries of this nature as "The Seats
of the Mighty and Miserable."
These sufferings involve a loss of appetite for days in advance of the
event; a complete derangement of the nervous system, with no chance of
recovery for at least ten days preceding the emergent hour, since sleep
either refuses to come to one's relief altogether, or coming brings in
its train a species of nerve-racking dream which leaves the last estate
of the weary slumberer worse than the first. The complication is far
more difficult to handle than that involved in the maturity of a
promissory note which one is unable to meet; for there are conditions
under which a tender-hearted creditor will permit a renewal of the
latter sort of obligation, and this thought provides some sort of rift
in the cloud of a debtor's despair.
But in the matter of public speaking there is no such comforting
possibility. Nothing short of inglorious flight, painful accident, or
serious illness, can save the signer of that promissory note for
twenty-five hundred personally conducted after-dinner words from being
called upon to pay in full the moment the note falls due. He can't even
plead to be permitted the payment of one paragraph on account, and the
balance in thirty days.
The contract can neither be evaded, postponed, nor sublet. It is then or
never with him, and while no great harm would come to the world if
ninety-nine and seven-eighths per cent. of the after-dinner speeches of
the ages had gone unspoken, no man of the right, forward-looking,
upstanding sort, whether his speeches be good, bad, or, like the most of
them, merely indifferent, may wilfully or comfortably permit a promise
of that nature to go to protest.
Yes, I sympathized with that excellent gentleman. I have known him to
take to his bed three days before the ordeal, tremblingly approach the
banquet board, rise to his feet, his nerves taut as a G string, his
knees quaking in the merciful seclusion of the regions under the table,
and then, with hardly a glimmering of consciousness of what he was doing
or saying, his whole being thrilled with terror, acquit himself
brilliantly, to return home at the conclusion of his trial physically
and nervously prostrated.
* * * * *
One of the happiest recollections of my platform work, nevertheless, had
to do with just such a shivering, quivering condition. It was many years
ago--back in the mid-'90's of the last century, that so-called crazy
end-of-the-century period, which inspired Max Nordau's depressing
treatise on Degeneracy, and yet now seems so gloriously sane in contrast
to what is going on in the world at the present time.
In some mysterious fashion I had succeeded in writing what the literary
world is pleased to term a "best seller," and was in consequence
enjoying a taste of that notoriety which inexperienced youth so often
confounds with immortality. One result was a tolerably persistent demand
that I exhibit myself at one of those then popular functions known as
Authors' Readings. This was a form of entertainment almost as
barbarically cruel as those ancient ceremonies in which Christian
martyrs were thrown into an arena to demonstrate their powers in
combatting irritated tigers, and such other blood-thirsty beasts of the
jungle as the ingenious fancy of the management might suggest. It was,
in a manner of speaking, a sort of Literary Hagenbeck Show, whither the
curious among the readers of the day were lured in sweet Charity's name
by the promise of a personal performance by real literary lions, with an
occasional wild goose or two wearing temporarily the gorgeous plumage of
the Birds of Parnassus, thrown in to make the program longer.
Invited to take part in one of these affairs, and feeling that for
posterity's sake it was my duty to rivet my firm grasp upon Fame by
keeping such company as my remotest great-grandchild could wish to have
me known by, I carelessly accepted as if it were easy to comply, and all
in the day's work of a new sun dawning upon the horizon of letters.
But when the fateful evening arrived a "change came o'er the spirit of
my dream." Two dread situations arose which bade fair to drive me either
into the nearest sanatorium, or to the obscurity of the deepest
available jungle. Had I yielded to my immediate impulse, I should have
flown as far afield as the Virginia negro who, upon being advised to
leave town lest he suffer certain extreme penalties for his misdeeds,
replied that he was "gwine, an' gwine so fur it'll cost nine dollars to
send a postal card back."
On one side of the curtain at the great metropolitan hall where the
Readings were to be held sat nearly three thousand hungry readers,
waiting to see six unhappy authors prove whether or no they could read
their own productions and survive; and on the other side of the curtain
were five real Immortals and my sorely agitated self. My fellow
sufferers that night were Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, Dr. Henry Van Dyke,
William Dean Howells, the lamented Frank R. Stockton, and the ever
unforgettable Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.
It was rather godlike company for a mere mortal like myself, and as I
gazed upon them I realized, perhaps for the first time, the magnificent
distances that lie between Yonkers-on-Hudson and Parnassus-by-Helicon.
Frozen from heel to toe by the thought of having to appear before so
vast and critical an audience, the complete refrigeration of my nervous
system was accomplished by the thought of even temporary association
with those fixed stars in the firmament of American Letters. Instead of
a burning torch on the heights of Olympus, I felt myself more of a
possible cinder in the public eye. One might be willing to appear before
a Court of Literary Justice in the company of any one of them, but to
assume equality with five such household words all at once, and
especially before an audience many of whose members had from time
immemorial known me as "Johnny"--well, to speak with frankness, it got
on my nerves.
My condition was like that foreshadowed by a good old neighbor of mine
up on the coast of Maine, who when I asked him one morning if he ever
felt nervous when the thunder was roaring, and the lightning was
striking viciously, replied, "No, I hain't never felt nervous: _I'm jest
plain dam skeert to death!_" If the exits from the stage had not been
guarded, I should have fled; but there was no escape, and while I
awaited my turn to go out upon the platform I paced the back of the
stage, concealed from the public gaze by a drop scene, shaking from head
to foot with a nervous chill. I can scarcely even now bring myself to
believe that there was a seismograph anywhere between the northern and
southern poles so callous as to fail to register my vibrations.
It became evident as the moment approached that I should be utterly
unable to go out upon the platform and do anything but dance: not after
the graceful manner of Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle, but of Saint Vitus
himself. To have held a book, even so light a one as my own, in my
shaking hand would have been physically impossible, and then, just as I
was about to seek out the chairman of the committee of arrangements, and
plead a sudden stroke of some sort, I felt a womanly arm thrust through
my own, and a soft white hand was laid gently and soothingly upon my
wrist. I glanced to my side, and there stood Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, her
lovely eyes full of sympathy, touched with a joyous reassuring twinkle.
"Oh, Mr. Bangs," said she, with a slight catch and tremor in her voice,
"do you know I am so nervous about going out before all those people
to-night that I really believe I shall have to borrow some of your manly
courage and strength to carry me through!"
A marvelous transformation of nervous attitude was the immediate result,
a determination to rush to the aid of a lady flying a signal of distress
summoning all my latent courage to her cause. A realization of the
lovely tactfulness of her approach and its true significance, and the
prompt response of my sense of humor, not yet quite dead, to the exact
facts of the situation, made a man of me for the time being--a man who
would dare the undarable, attempt the unattainable, and if need be, as
the eloquent African preacher once observed, "onscrew the onscrutable."
Nervousness, cowardice, muscular vibrations, and all disappeared like
the mists of the night before the radiance of the dawn in the face of
that gracious woman's tactful humor, and later on I went forth to my
doom so brazenly, and smiling so confidently, that one critic in the
next morning's newspaper intimated without much subtlety of phrasing
that I enjoyed myself far more than my audience did.
It would be too much to say that Mrs. Howe's timely intervention on my
behalf effected a permanent cure of my nervousness in platform work; but
it has helped me much to overcome it; for many a time since, when
through sheer weariness, or for some purely psychological reason, I have
approached my work with uneasy forebodings, the memory of that
delightful incident has come back to me, and I have invariably found
relief from my fears in the smile which it never fails to bring to my
lips, and to my spirit as well.
I do not know that it would be a good thing for any public speaker ever
to approach the emergent hour with entire assurance and utterly
calloused nerves. Such a condition might well bespeak an indifference to
the work in hand which would result either in a purely mechanical
delivery, or one so careless as to destroy the effect of the lecturer's
most valuable asset--a sympathetic personality. I recall far back in my
college days, in the early '80's of the last century, meeting at one of
my fraternity conventions that inspiring publicist, the late Senator
Frye of Maine. In the course of a pleasant chat, having myself to appear
before the convention with a committee report the following morning, and
feeling a trifle uncertain as to how I was going to "come through," I
asked the senator if he was ever a victim to nervousness when making a
public address, and his answer was very suggestive.
"Always, my lad," said he, "always! I have been making public speeches
off and on now for twenty-five or thirty years, and even to-day when I
rise up to speak in the United States Senate, or on the stump, my knees
shake a little under me. And I'm glad they do, Son," he went on
significantly; "for if they didn't, I should begin to feel that the days
of my usefulness were over, for it would mean that I really didn't care
whether I got through safely or not."
So it was that up to a certain point I sympathized with my friend the
distinguished after-dinner speaker when he intimated that the lecture
platform was no bed of roses. For one of his nervous organization and
temperament it would be impossible. It would make a nervous wreck of him
in a short while, and in the end would shorten his life, even as it has
shortened the span of many another robust spirit; such as the late
Alfred Tennyson Dickens, for instance, who in very truth succumbed to
the exactions of travel and of a lovely hospitality that he knew not how
to resist.
But for myself there is so much in the work that is inspiring, so much
that is pleasing in the human relationships it makes possible, that but
for the discomforts of travel I could really feed upon it spiritually,
and seek no happier diet. I defy any man to be a pessimist on the
subject of American character after a season or two on the lecture
platform; provided of course that he is a reasonably sympathetic man,
and is so constituted in matters social that he is what the politicians
call a "good mixer."
To the man who is not interested in the human animal, and insists upon
judging all men by his own rigid and narrow standards, measuring souls
by a yardstick, as it were, the work can never be a joy; but if he is
broad enough to take people as he finds them, looking for the good that
lies inherent in every human being, and judging them by the measure of
their capacity to become what they were designed to be, and are honestly
trying to be, then he will find it full of a living and a loving
interest almost equal to that of the "joy forever."
Pasted in my spiritual hat is a little rime by one whose name modesty
forbids my mentioning, running:
I can't be what Shakespeare was,
I can't do what great folks does;
But, by Ginger, I can be
ME!
And among the folks that love me
Nothin' more's expected of me.
The wandering platform speaker who will heed the intimations of that
little rime, and seize the friendships in kind that surely await his
coming in all parts of this great, genial country of ours, will find a
wondrous store of happiness ready to his hand. If in addition to this he
will cultivate the habit of looking for good in unpromising places, and
of resolutely refusing to admit the power of small irritations to
destroy his peace of mind, he will get along nicely. The latter of
course requires resolution of a kind that is persistent in the face of
unremitting annoyances. To say that these annoyances do not exist would
be idle; but not half so idle as the act of giving them controlling
importance in the making or the unmaking of a day's happiness.
The sooner one who travels the Platform Path learns to suspend judgment
as to his fellow beings, and to suspect the fallacy of the obvious, the
better it will be for him, and for his personal comfort. The first
conspicuous lesson I had in this particular was out in Arizona on my
first extended tour in our wonderful West in 1906. I found myself one
afternoon on my way from Los Angeles to Phoenix. After having satisfied
the inner man with an excellent Fred Harvey luncheon--an edible oasis
always in a desert of indigestibility--I had retired to the smoking car
for that spiritual refreshment which comes from watching the smoke
wreaths curl upward from the end of a good cigar.
Unhappily for the quality of that refreshment, I was no sooner seated in
the smoking room that I perceived that I was surrounded by men who,
judging by surface indications, were hopeless vulgarians. Among them
were three especially whose conversation was even lower than their
brows. I think I can best describe their conversation by saying that in
all probability Boccaccio's lady companions out Fiesole way, at the time
of the plague that drove the Florentine Four Hundred beyond the city
limits, would have fled blushingly before it, taking refuge by
preference in the pure, undefiled Rolloisms of the Decameron itself;
while poor old Rabelais, not always a master of reticence in things
better left unsaid, would, I am sure, have joined a literary branch of
the I. W. W. in sheer rebellion, rather than sully the refinement of his
pen by taking down any part of it.
One has to listen to a great deal of this sort of thing en route, and
pending the discovery of some kind of vocal silencer that shall render
such communications as noiseless as they are corrupting to good manners,
or a portable muffler which the unwilling listener may place over his
ears, the wandering platform performer who has not yet reached a point
where he can give up his cigar and be happy must needs endure them.
Indeed he is doing well if he is not lured into a shamefaced enjoyment
of such talk; for it must be admitted that some of the traveling
companions one meets thus by chance have rare powers as story-tellers,
and pour forth at times most objectionable periods with a smiling
enthusiasm almost fetching enough to tempt a Simeon Stylites down from
the top of his pillar into the lower regions of their alluring good
fellowship.
Neither a prig nor a prude am I; but on this particular occasion the
gross results of the conversation were so very gross as to preclude the
possibility of there being any "net proceeds" of value, and I fled.
On returning to my place in the sleeper I noticed in the section
directly across the aisle a handsome Englishwoman, traveling with no
other companion than a little daughter, a child of about three and a
half years of happy, bubbling youth. The little one was seated on her
mother's lap, and was enjoying a "let's pretend" drive across country,
using the maternal lorgnette chain in lieu of the ribbons wherewith to
guide her imaginary steeds.
An hour passed, when a boisterous laugh from the rear of the car
indicated the approach of the three barbarians of the smoker, who to my
disgust a moment later settled themselves in the section directly in
front of mine, and to my dismay began apparently to take a greater
interest in the lady across the aisle than the ordinary usages of polite
human intercourse warranted, lacking a formal introduction.
I have never posed as a Squire of Dames, and I have a wholesome distaste
for such troubles as an unseeing eye enables a man to avoid; but the
intrusion of these Goths, not to say Vandals, upon the lady's right to
travel unmolested was so obvious that I couldn't help seeing and
inwardly resenting it. The woman herself treated the situation with
becoming coolness and dignity, showing only by a slight change of color,
and now and then a vexed biting of the lips, that she noticed it at
all; but the cooler she became the more strenuous became the efforts of
the barbarians to "scrape an acquaintance."
I held an inward debate with myself as to my duty in the premises. I did
not care to get into a row; but the ogling soon became so pronounced
that it really seemed necessary to interfere. I reached out my hand to
ring for such reinforcements as the porter and the conductor might be
able to bring to our assistance, when to my astonishment the worst
offender of the three rose from his seat, and stepped quickly to the
lady's side--and then there was revealed to me the marvelous wisdom of
the old injunction, "Judge not, that ye be not judged"; for the supposed
ruffian, whom I would a moment before have willingly, and with seeming
justification, thrown bodily from the train, with the manner of a
Chesterfield in the rough lifted his hat and spoke.
"You will excuse me for speaking to you, ma'am," he said, and there was
a wistful smile on his lips and a tenderness in his eye worthy of a
seemingly better cause, "but I'm--I'm what they call a drummer, a
traveling man, and I've been away from home for three months. I've got
a little girl of my own at home about the same age as this kid of yours,
and I tell you, ma'am, you'd ease off an awful case of homesickness if
you'd let me play with the little lady just for a few minutes."
The mother's heart seemed to go right out to him, as did mine also. She
smiled graciously, and handed over her little daughter to the tender
mercies of that group whose presence I had fled only a short while
before--and for the rest of the afternoon that Pullman sleeper was
transformed into a particularly bright and joyous nursery that echoed
and reechoed to the merry laughter of happy childhood.
If there is an animal of any kind in the zoos of commerce that those men
did not impersonate during the next two or three hours I do not know its
name, the especially objectionable barbarian transforming himself
instantly on demand into an elephant, a yak, a roaring lion, a tiger, or
a leopard changing its spots as actively as a flea, and all with a
graceful facility that Proteus himself might well have envied. And
later, when night fell, and weariness came with it, in the dusk of the
twilight it was indeed a pretty sight to me, and a sight that smote
somewhat upon my conscience for my over-ready contempt of the earlier
afternoon, when my gaze fell upon the figure of an exhausted drummer,
his eyes half-closed, sleepily humming a tender lullaby to a tired
little golden-haired stranger who lay cuddled up in his arms, fast
asleep, with her head upon his breast.
[Illustration: "It was indeed a pretty sight to me!"]
I like to think that that little incident was a valuable contribution
to my education in the science of brotherhood. It has not perhaps
produced in my soul a larger tolerance of the intolerable in casual
conversation, but it has served to warn me against the dangers of snap
judgments, and has certainly broadened my sympathies in respect to my
fellow man in my chance meetings with him upon the highways and byways
of life, whence sometimes, in the loneliness of my wanderings, I have
gathered much comfort, and reaped harvests in friendliness which
otherwise I might have lost.