"Yours must be an extra hazardous occupation," said a chance
acquaintance on a little trip through Ohio last year. "Do you carry any
insurance?"
"Yes," said I. "I have an excellent accident insurance policy, and it is
a great comfort. Sometimes on dark nights when I am suddenly awakened by
some catastrophic quivering of my berth, as if a young earthquake had
come aboard, and realize that the train has probably left the track, and
is traveling ahead at a mile-a-minute clip over the rocky bed of some
mountain stream, it is a real pleasure to me to foot up the sum total of
the affluence that will be mine if we fail to strike a switch somewhere
that will get us back on the main line again."
"Affluence is good," said he; "but it won't be yours--not if you break
your neck."
"Oh, I never think of that," said I. "I think only of the possibility of
injuries, and from that point of view the accident insurance policy is a
joy forever. It makes you think so well of yourself, and as you lie off
in your berth figuring on two legs and a couple of arms at five thousand
dollars apiece, twenty toes and fingers at two hundred and fifty a
digit, with your neck valued at twenty-five thousand dollars, you begin
to feel that a man isn't such a worthless creature after all. I suppose
even my nose is worth something."
"Great Scott!" he ejaculated. "Do toes and fingers come as high as
that?"
"They do," said I. "I've carried a policy assuring me a market for them
at that rate for the last five years, and if I lose them in a railway
smash-up, in a taxicab, in a trolley, or in a public elevator somewhere,
the quotation doubles. Under certain contingencies my fingers and toes
have a market value of ten thousand dollars."
"Heavens!" he cried. "_Have you ever had any luck?_"
From his point of view I presume I have not had any "luck"; but I am
content, satisfied, and even grateful that so far the exigencies of
travel have not required me to collect anything on my policy, or
compelled me to sacrifice any of my digital collateral even at what seem
to be par or premium prices.
But my friend was not altogether wrong in regarding the occupation of an
itinerant lyceumite as a hazardous one. If one were to conjure up a
picture of the gods of evil shooting darts at human targets, one might
think that, a moving object being harder to hit than one that is
definitely fixed, the former would prove a better risk than the latter;
but it is one of the paradoxes of life that this is not the case, unless
of course the sniping fates are better sharpshooters than professional
artillerists.
The possibilities of accident to one who is constantly moving from
pillar to post on American railways, many of them starved to death in
the name of Progress, and unable to maintain an equipment that is even
moderately safe; on steamboat lines many of whose vessels are little
more than resin-soaked tinderboxes, over-crowded with pipe and cigarette
smokers, and speeding through fog-bound waters at night as though the
Evil One himself were just astern in pursuit of the Captain; sleeping
in hotels constructed of Georgia pine, on mattresses stuffed with
excelsior, with matches that, like flies, will light on anything in
sight, strewn about on every side,--well, to commute this sentence, the
possibilities of accident to such a one are of such a sort that "age
cannot wither nor custom stale their infinite variety."
And as for the lecture halls, one now and then encounters a place where
it seems as though it were a vain-glorious tempting of fate to enter it.
I recall one marvelous hall in one of the most cultured sections of New
England, in a town not more than seventy-five miles from Boston, the
home of one of America's most famous schools, and the capital of a State
that has produced men of worldwide eminence, which in any Court of
Commonsense would have been indicted as a menace to the public welfare.
It was reached by a climb of two flights of stairs, the first scarcely
wide enough for two people to walk up abreast, and the second rising
from the end of a dimly lighted corridor up six steps to a landing
whence ran on each side two other sections of four or five steps each to
a second landing, with still a third turn and another climb before the
auditorium floor was reached; and all this in an ordinary brick
building, erected long before fireproof construction was even thought
of.
My lecture in this architectural device of Beelzebub was delivered
before an audience of four hundred people, just one week after the
terrible disaster at Boyerstown, Pennsylvania, in which I know not how
many lives were lost in a fire started by the explosion of a
cinematograph machine. As I stepped upon the stage I inquired of my
escort if there were any fire escapes on the building, and was informed
that a huge iron door at the rear of the stage opened upon one. I was
moderately relieved until I tried to open the iron door, only to find it
locked--_and the janitor had left the key at home!_ I may add that if my
memory serves me correctly--and it does--this ingeniously designed
atrocity was pleasantly and appropriately known as Phenix Hall. _Absit
omen!_
In the main, however, the lecture halls of America are rather fine
affairs. In the State of New York and on the other side of the
Mississippi River I have found splendid auditoriums, acoustically
perfect, well ventilated, and as nearly safe as human ingenuity can make
them. The high schools of New York and Massachusetts, and the
flourishing educational institutions of the West, have set a pace which
other communities would do well to follow: not so much for the sake of
the itinerant platformist as for the "safety, honor, and welfare" of
their own sons and daughters. In Houston, Texas, where there is a
municipally owned free lecture and music course on Sunday afternoons,
beginning in October and running through to May, is one of the finest
auditoriums I have ever seen anywhere. It seats in comfort and safety an
audience of eight thousand, and neither New York, Boston, Philadelphia,
nor even Chicago, has anything comparable to it.
I have indeed had luck according to my own conception of it, on trains
traveled on, and in respect to trains missed as well. I have been in two
railway smash-ups, in the first of which the car behind mine was
overturned and reduced to kindling in the twinkling of an eye, and
miraculously without serious injury to any one; and in the other the
engine directly in front of the car in which I was sitting, having
endeavored to jump a frozen switch, succeeded only in landing upon its
own back, leaving my car teetering to and fro for a moment as if
undecided whether to roll down an embankment, or to remain poised on its
offside wheels like a ballet girl balanced upon one tangoing toe. If the
gentleman who sat beside me on that occasion had shifted his chewing gum
to the other side, I think we should have gone plunging down that
embankment into the river; but fortunately he was too paralyzed with
fear even to do that, and we remained fixed, safe as ever was the
intrepid Blondin when he essayed to walk across Niagara Falls on his
slack wire.
As for the trains missed, it was only an over-prolonged discussion of
the mysteries of golf between myself and a past-master of putting at
Haverhill, Massachusetts, which caused me to miss by ten seconds a
section of the Portland Express to New York that five hours later landed
in a ditch somewhere in Connecticut.
In respect to perils by water there are the steamboat perils, and those
more insidious dangers that come from too free indulgence in the only
kind of beverage the wise platformist dares adopt as a steady tipple.
These latter perils I have tried to reduce to a minimum by having a
billion and a half typhus germs mobilized within to patrol my system,
so that any skulking bacilli seeking to spread revolutionary ideas in my
midst, and gaining admittance thereto through my taste for ice water,
will be seized and duly throttled ere they have time to lay the
foundation for an effective propaganda.
[Illustration: "If he had shifted his chewing gum to the other side, we
should have plunged into the river."]
But there is no inoculation against the perils of steamboats; although I
have been in imminent danger only once in this way, and in its ultimate
results even that was far more amusing than terrifying. I was on my way
to Boston by the Fall River boat when the incident occurred. The night
was foggy, and I retired early. The faithful craft kept steadily on her
way, feeling her path through the dark waters of the sound. I slept only
fitfully until midnight, when weary Nature at last asserted herself, and
I fell into a profound slumber. At four in the morning, however, I was
awakened rudely by a fierce shriek of the whistle, a seemingly quick
reversal of the engines, a very decided shock as of an impact with some
heavy body, followed by a grinding sound, and much shouting.
I sprang from my berth, and glancing out of the window could see nothing
but grimly gray fog. It was the work of a moment to jump into my shoes
and bathrobe, and go speeding out into the main saloon.
"Any danger, Porter?" I inquired of a wide-awake gentleman of color, who
was leaning over the stair-railing.
"_Not unless yo' goes asho', Kuhnnel_," he replied with a grin. "_Dis is
Newport._"
But there are perils other than these which must be taken into account
in reckoning up the hazards of the profession--or perhaps in view of the
eternity of the chase it were better called a pursuit. They include
exposure to almost every kind of catastrophe mentioned in the Litany,
from battle, murder, and sudden death, through hunger and thirst, to the
tapering point of mere necessity and tribulation.
I have nearly starved with teeming granaries on every side of me. Once
in a delightful mid-New York community which I have since revisited and
come to hold in affection, I found myself after a long, tedious, and
foodless journey at a hotel where the table was frankly impossible. I
arrived late, and out of an ample bill of fare there was nothing left
but a few scraps of preserved fish, and not very well preserved at that.
If fish could be personified, this particular bit of piscatorial
cussedness might have passed as the Rip Van Winkle of the Sea, so long
had it evidently been since it left its home in the depths. The merest
glance at it filled the eye with visions of serried ranks of ptomaines,
armed cap-a-pie for trouble. It waved the red flag of digestive anarchy
from the end of every bone and fin, and fortunately for me the very
pungency of its aroma took care of my hunger for the moment. One sniff
appeased my appetite for any kind of food.
Later, when the chairman of the committee called and invited me to take
a drive with him about the town, even though I had had nothing to eat
for nearly twelve hours, I accepted. At the end of our drive we stopped
at the chairman's home, a delightfully comfortable, newly built house,
which he had designed himself and of which he was justly proud. As we
entered his dining room a natural association of ideas caused my
appetite to return with renewed vigor, and I thought I saw a chance for
at least one good meal that day.
"By Jove, Doctor!" said I, "what a pretty room this is!" And then I
added, with all the pathos I could put into my voice, "You don't know
what a joy it is to get a glimpse now and then of a real home dining
room after eating day after day in some of these fearful country hotels.
I don't want to seem unduly critical, but really I got the worst dinner
at the Blithers House to-day that I've ever had." And I stood expectant.
"Well," he said reflectively, "_you'll get a worse supper_!"
And lo, it was so.
A similarly distressing moment one morning out in Montana once brought
me a more satisfactory tribute. My train was hours late, and no
preparations had been made by the usually considerate management of the
Northern Pacific Railroad for the refreshment of the inner man. There
was neither diner nor buffet on the train, and as the morning wore on
toward noon I became famished to the extent of positive pain and general
giddiness. To my supreme relief, however, along about half-past eleven
o'clock the train drew into the little station of Livingston, where
connections are made by travelers to the Yellowstone. As we drew slowly
in the welcome sign of "LUNCH ROOM" greeted my vision; but the train did
not stop until we had passed the sign by at least a hundred yards.
Finally when we came to a standstill I rushed to the rear platform of
the train, and was about to jump off when the conductor intervened.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"For food," said I. "I'm nearly dead for a cup of coffee."
"We're not going to stop any time," said he, with a glance at his watch.
"We're seven hours late as it is."
"Oh, come now, Conductor!" said I. "Five minutes more isn't going to
hurt anybody--"
"All right," said he, "go ahead. Only when you hear the whistle blow
don't lose a minute, hungry or no hungry."
With that understanding I sped to the lunch counter, and in a few
moments had a roll and a steaming cup of coffee before me; but, alas for
all human expectations! the coffee was so fearfully hot nothing but a
salamander could have hoped to drink it with safety, and I had hardly
taken one scalding sip of it when the whistle blew sharply. There was
but one thing to do, and I did it. I poured the coffee into my saucer
and drained as much as I could of it from that, thrust the roll into my
pocket, and darted after the train, which had already begun to move
slowly, conscious all the while of the soft thud of pattering feet, like
those of the white rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland," behind me. I caught
the train, seizing the rear platform rail with one hand, and when
swinging myself on board was projected almost flat on my face by another
passenger who suddenly developed like an infant battering ram at the
rear. He was a little man, and his breath came in appropriate pants.
Both completely winded, we gazed into each other's eyes.
"Bub-beg pardon," he gasped. "I dud-didn't mean to bub-bump into you.
Very grateful to you--yuh--you saved my life!"
"Saved your life?" said I. "How so?"
"Why," said he, "I was nearly gone for want of my coffee, and the stuff
was so infernally hot I couldn't drink it, and then when I saw you
pouring yours out into your saucer, I says to myself, '_Well, if a
swell-lookin' guy like that kin do that, I kin,--an' b'gosh, I did!_"
A not infrequent source of terror to the platform speaker, if not a real
peril, is the small boy one encounters en route, singly and alone or in
groups. I am glad to say that I have always delighted in him, and so
far, despite the possibilities, none of my contacts with him has
resulted disastrously; but, while nobody ever need mark him "FRAGILE,"
it is none the less true that he should be handled with care, and kept
right side up if possible, for the sake of the general comfort.
One of these youngsters once gave me a supreme example of intrinsic
honesty which I shall never forget. I met him on the evening of my
lecture in the town of Everett, Massachusetts. I had somehow got the
notion that Everett was farther afield from Boston than it really is,
and starting early I arrived at the high school hall a full hour before
the advertised time. The building was dark, and every door was locked;
so that for some thirty or forty minutes I was compelled to pace the
sidewalk in front of it, awaiting the arrival of somebody who could let
me in. After several turns up and down the street I was accosted by a
bright-faced little urchin who held a ticket for my lecture in his hand.
"Want to buy a ticket for to-night's lecture, mister?" said he.
"No, son," said I. "I've heard this lecture several times already, and I
wouldn't go through it again for seven dollars."
"Gee!" he ejaculated. "_If it's as bad as that, I guess I'd better tear
this up._" And he destroyed the ticket on which he had doubtless
expected to realize much soda-water money before my very eyes, and went
whistling along upon his honest little way.
Perhaps this little lad does not come properly under the head of
Hazards; but in one of the larger cities of Arkansas I once came upon a
group of boys who did, and they kept me in a state of trepidation for a
goodly part of the evening. It happened that simultaneously with my
arrival in town there arrived also a snowstorm that for that section of
the country was a heavy one. Heavy or light, it brought with it enough
snow to provide these forty-odd youngsters with the kind of occupation
that all healthy-minded youngsters find to their taste--that of
snow-balling passersby. When my motor arrived at the lecture hall the
boys were on hand, and for two or three minutes the car was the object
of a fierce fusillade of icy missiles that nearly put the chauffeur out
of commission. The committee hustled me into the hall with no more
damage than one rather slushy splosh of snow perilously close to my
neck.
"It's a shame, Mr. Bangs," said the chairman, "and I apologize. These
boys aren't a bad lot; but they are irrepressible. I'd advise you to go
slow with them to-night. They've broken up two lectures already."
"Gracious!" said I. "Do they attend the lectures?"
"Yes," said the chairman. "By arrangement with the school authorities
they have the first two rows reserved for them free."
And sure enough when I walked out upon the platform there they were, two
solid rows of them, eying me like hungry birds of prey ready to pounce
upon a particularly luscious morsel. I should have fled if flight had
been possible; but it was not, and I looked forward to an hour and a
half of trial. But as the chairman was introducing me an idea popped
into my head which I am glad to say saved the day--or rather the night.
Instead of my usual opening I addressed a few words to the boys.
"It is an awful shame, my young friends," said I, "that the requirements
of this lecture course and the necessities of my own engagements compel
you and me to waste such a delightful evening as this indoors. I feel
just as badly as you do about it; for while what few hairs I have are
gray, I give you my word that I'd rather go into a good redhot snowball
fight with you than listen to the finest lecture that was ever
delivered. If I didn't have to go on to Memphis to-night, I'd ask the
committee and the audience to postpone this lecture until the snow
melts, so that I could show you what a corking shot I am at any old
beaver hat, moving or fixed, that ever crowned a mortal head."
The effect was instantaneous. A wave of enthusiasm swept over the lads,
and the only interference I had from them during my talk was a somewhat
too-ready inclination on their part to help me along with laughter and
applause at points where tears and silence would have been more
appropriate. Moreover, when at the close of my lecture I started with
some reluctance to leave the hall, instead of the volley of arctic
ammunition that I had expected, I found those youngsters lined up twenty
on a side between the door and my motor with their hats off, forming a
little alley of honor for me to tread, giving me three rousing cheers as
I departed.
From which somewhat trying experience I deduce that there is a good deal
more latent courtesy in Young America than certain despairing critics
of modern manners would have us believe. It may be that the reason why
we do not find it oftener is that we do not ourselves give it the
opportunity to express itself.
I have spoken of our exposure to "battle, murder, and sudden death," and
to some it may have seemed an exaggeration to claim anything of the sort
as a platform peril; and yet there was one occasion upon which I was so
uncomfortably tangent to such conditions that they seemed all too real.
It was in one of our far western States. Scheduled to lecture there at
eight P.M., my train did not reach the town until nine-forty-five. I had
telegraphed news of my delay ahead, and my audience with rare courtesy
had voted to remain at the hall until I arrived.
I dressed on the train, and on descending from it was whisked to the
opera house in a prehistoric hack, which shed one of its wheels en
route, spilling the committee and myself into the road, but without
damage; while my Only Muse went on to the hotel, a two-story affair,
where she secured accommodations for the night. Later, on the conclusion
of my talk, on my arrival at the hotel, I found the Muse sitting up in
bed, pallid as a ghost, with a revolver at her side.
[Illustration: "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 on which 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 and its powers to make
things uncomfortable from its aerial 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.