I shall never forget the expression of serene immunity from care on the
face of one of my editorial chiefs when some years ago I told him that I
was very much embarrassed by certain arrangements he himself had made
over my head. They were such arrangements as to make my position frankly
impossible.
"You have embarrassed me more than I care to say," said I.
"Embarrassment is a sign of weakness," he replied calmly. "Don't ever be
embarrassed."
"But what can I do?" said I. "You have made these arrangements, and--"
"Well, if I were you," said he, smiling, and putting considerable
emphasis on the _you_, "rather than admit that anything under heaven
embarrassed me I'd tell _me_ to go to the devil with my arrangements."
I took him at his word. We both laughed, and the immediate awkwardness
vanished. While I cannot truthfully say that telling him to "go to" was
a wholly satisfactory ultimate solution of all our difficulties, I have
as a matter of policy adopted that attitude toward troublesome things
ever since, to the material advantage at least of my own peace of mind.
I have found the philosophy involved a workable one, and more than
helpful to me in the pursuit of my platform labors, especially that part
of it involving the "laugh."
It certainly rescued me from a deal of unhappiness over a wasted date a
year or so ago in Michigan, for which I was in no sense to blame, and
which, had the various parties been inclined to quarrel over misfortune,
might have resulted in much unpleasantness.
Following a Wednesday night engagement in mid-Ohio was a Thursday night
in a more or less remote section of the Wolverine State. To reach the
Thursday night scene of action I was required to rise at five o'clock in
the morning and travel with one or two awkward changes of trains to Fort
Wayne, going thence to Kalamazoo, and from there by a way train to the
point in question. It was a long, tedious drive of a day, and when I
reached Kalamazoo I unburdened myself vigorously to the Only Muse to the
effect that if anybody, anywhere, would offer me a job as third
assistant manager of a tolerably stationary peanut stand at two dollars
a week, payable in deferred promises, I should consider the offer a most
tempting one.
My comfort was not at all enhanced by my discovery on reaching Kalamazoo
that I had completely misread the timetables, and that instead of
arriving at our destination at five in the afternoon, leaving me plenty
of time for rest, refreshment, and change of clothes, the only possible
train, even if it ran on time, could not get me through to the haven of
my desires until five minutes before eight, with the lecture scheduled
to begin at eight-fifteen. So I rested, refreshed, and dressed at
Kalamazoo, and perforce traveled over the last stage of that wearisome
journey in full evening dress, slowly but surely accumulating en route a
sufficient supply of soot, cinders, grit, and other appurtenances of
travel on a soft-coal, one-horse railroad, to make me appear like a
masterpiece of spatterwork when I arrived at the farther end.
By some odd mischance, never as yet satisfactorily accounted for, the
train got through on time. The Only Muse and I hastily boarded an
omnibus, and were whisked through the impenetrable depths of a dark
night to the hotel, whence, after seeing her properly bestowed, I
hastened to the Auditorium where the lecture was to be held. To my
surprise when I got there I found the building wholly dark. There was
not a sign of life anywhere about it. I banged, whacked, and thundered
on the door like an invading artillery corps; but with no response of
any sort. But a glance up the street a moment later relieved the
pressure of my woe; for there my vision was cheered by a brilliantly
lighted church.
"Of course," I thought, "the Auditorium is too small to accommodate the
audience, and they've changed over to the church."
I glanced at my watch, and discovered that I had two minutes to spare. A
goodly sprint brought me panting to the front door of the edifice, and
with some unnecessary noise, perhaps due wholly to the impetuosity of my
approach, I burst in upon the assembled multitude--to find, alas! that
the very sizable audience gathered there with their heads bowed, and
listening to an eloquent appeal for blessings desired by a gentleman
wearing a long frock coat and a white necktie, were not for me. To my
chagrin I soon learned that I had come within an ace of _breaking up_ a
prayer meeting--if I may be allowed the use of such incongruous terms in
the phrase. I backed out as gracefully as I could, and collided with a
late comer.
"Is there more than one Auditorium in town?" I whispered, after
apologizing for my reactionary behavior.
"Oh, yes," he replied politely, "there is the Auditorium, and the High
School Auditorium."
[Illustration: "I found the building wholly dark."]
"Well, would you mind telling me where they are?" I queried.
"That is the High School Auditorium up there," he said, pointing to the
Egyptian darkness I had just left. "The other is three squares down,
where you see all those electric lights."
Whether I thanked the gentleman or not I do not know. I hope I did; but
in the hurry of my departure I fear I seemed discourteous. Another
speedy dash, which left me completely winded, brought me to the other
Auditorium, and there in the full glare of an electric spotlight,
assisted in its quest of publicity by a hoarse-tongued barker with a
megaphone, I was confronted by a highly colored lithograph, showing a
very pink Mabel, Queen of the Movies, standing before a very blue
American soldier tied to a tree, shielding him from the bullets of a
line of very green Mexicans, under the command of a very red villain,
holding a very mauve sword in his very yellow hand, and bidding them to
"Fire!" If I was expected to take any part in the thrilling episode that
appeared to be going on inside, there was nothing in the chromatic
advertising outside to indicate the fact; though I confess I was
becoming painfully conscious of certain strong resemblances between my
very breathless self and that very blue American trooper tied to the
tree.
"Excuse me," said I, addressing the barker, "but is there to be a
lecture here to-night?"
"Not so's anybody'd notice it," said he. "These is the movies."
"Well--tell me--is there a lecture course of any kind in this town that
you know of?" I asked.
"Sure!" said he. "Miss So-and-So down at the library is runnin' a
lecture stunt of some kind this year. You'll find the library on Main
Street, opposite the hotel."
Again, late as it was, the skies cleared, and I moved on to the library,
completing the circuit of vast numbers of blocks to a point almost
opposite the spot I had started from fifteen lifelong minutes before. I
arrived in a state of active perspiration and suspended respiration that
did not seem to promise much in the way of a successful delivery of my
lecture that night. I hoped the Library Auditorium would not prove to be
a large one; for in my disorganized condition I did not feel capable of
projecting my voice even into the shallows, to say nothing of the
sometimes unfathomable depths of endless tiers of seats. And my hope
was realized; in fact it was more than realized, for there wasn't any
Library Auditorium at all.
The citizens of that town had a library that was devoted rather to good
literature than to architectural splendor. Their books were housed in an
ordinary shop, or store. It was deep, narrow, and bookishly cozy, and at
the far end of it, seated at a generously large table, engaged in
knitting, was a charming lady who glanced up from her needles as I
approached.
"Pardon my intrusion, madam," I panted, "but can you tell me where I can
find Miss So-and-So?"
"I am Miss So-and-So," she replied graciously.
"Well," said I, "I am Mr. Bangs."
Her knitting fell to the floor. "Why--Mr. Bangs!" she replied, with a
gasp almost equal to my own. "I am very glad indeed to see you; but what
are you doing here?"
"I--I've come to lecture," I said weakly, almost pleadingly.
"To lecture?" she echoed. "_Why, your lecture is not to be until a week
from to-night!_"
"Then I am afraid we shall have to get my astral body to work," said I;
"for a week from to-night I shall be at Hiawatha, Kansas. How do you
propose to have the lecture delivered--by long distance telephone, or
parcels post?"
We gazed into each other's eyes for a moment, and then--we both laughed.
It seemed the only thing to do.
Gallantry forbids my saying which of us had made the mistake under the
terms of the written contract. Suffice it to say that two months later I
returned to that good little town, and was received like a conquering
hero by an audience that in its cordiality more than compensated me for
the distressing effects of an "unlectured lecture."
What promised to be a more serious complication occurred about a month
later in Florida, where in pursuance of instructions from my Southern
managers I arrived at Daytona on a Monday, to open the flourishing
Chautauqua Course, which has become a permanent feature of life at that
attractive Southern resort. The seriousness of the situation grew out of
the quality of the genius and the nature of the popularity of the other
individual involved, who was no less a personage than the Hon. William
Jennings Bryan. Any minor star in the platform firmament who comes into
collision with the planetary splendor of this Monarch of Modern
Loquacity has about as much chance of escaping unscathed as a tallow-dip
would have in a passage at arms with the sun itself.
There is no escaping the fact that Mr. Bryan is the idol of the
Chautauqua Circuit, and it is equally true that every bit of the success
he has achieved therein he has earned many times over. I am not, never
have been, and see no possibility of my ever becoming, a devotee of Mr.
Bryan's political fortunes; but as a platform speaker he is far and away
the most brilliant and likable personality in the public eye to-day. He
is an expert in playing upon the emotions of an audience, large or
small--preferably large--as ever was Dudley Buck in the manipulation of
the keys and stops of an organ, and he can at will strike chords in the
human heart as searchingly appealing as any produced by an Elman or a
Kreisler on the violin, or a Paderewski at the piano.
The keynotes of his platform work are a seeming sincerity and a magnetic
humanness that are irresistible, and no individual who has ever listened
to him in matters outside of political controversy, however reluctant
to admit his greatness, has failed to fall beneath the winning spell of
man, matter, and method. He is an interesting personality, and has a
greater number of points of contact with the general run of humanity
than any other public speaker of to-day. It is a stimulating thing to
know that in this line of human endeavor he has got his reward in the
assured position he holds in a movement at which it is the fashion in
some uninformed and cynical quarters to sneer, but which in point of
fact has had a supremely awakening effect upon the American people, and
for which we are all of us the better off.
"All of which," as a friend of mine once put it after I had expressed
myself in similar terms concerning Mr. Bryan, "is some tribute for a
narrow-minded, hide-bound, bigoted, old standpat, reactionary,
antediluvian Republican to pay to a hated rival!"
I was frankly appalled on arriving at Daytona to find the town placarded
from end to end with posters announcing Mr. Bryan's appearance there
that evening--my evening, as I had supposed it to be. I did not know
exactly what to do. I knew perfectly well what would happen to me if it
came to a hand-to-hand contest for possession of the stage. Physically,
with Mr. Bryan and myself left to decide the matter for ourselves, after
the fashion of a pair of bantam white hopes, I felt that I might have a
fairly good chance to win out; for I am not altogether without brawn,
and in the matter of handling a pair of boxing gloves am probably quite
as expert as the late Secretary of State; but nobody outside of
Matteawan would be so blind to commonsense as to expect an audience
anywhere either to stand neutral or to indulge in a policy of "watchful
waiting" with such a contest going on on the platform.
My first impulse in the circumstances was to get out of town as quickly
and as quietly as I could, and forget that there was such a place as
Daytona on the map; but a careful scrutiny of my letter of instructions
reassured me. The date, according to the supreme managers at Atlanta,
was clearly mine, and I decided at least to go down with colors flying.
I have never run from my own lithographs, and I saw no reason why I
should flee from Mr. Bryan's. I got in touch with the local committee as
soon as possible, and soon had at least the solace of companionship in
my misery. They were as upset about it as I was.
"But, Mr. Bangs," protested the chairman, almost with tears in his
eyes--his voice was full of them--"you aren't due here until to-morrow
night."
"I don't see how that can be," I replied unfeelingly. "You know
perfectly well that I am not twins, and only twins can appear in two
places at once. I am to lecture at Miami to-morrow night."
I handed the gentleman my letter of instructions, confirming my
statement. It was all down in black and white.
"It's a perfectly terrible situation," said the chairman, tears even
springing from his brow, "and I'm blest if I know what to do!"
"There is only one of three things to be done," said I. "The first is to
let me sit in the audience to-night and listen to Mr. Bryan, collecting
my fee on the ground that I have earned it by holding my tongue--which
is some job for a man primed with unspoken words. The second is to let
Mr. Bryan and myself go out on the platform and indulge in a lecture
Marathon, he at one side of the stage, I at the other, talking
simultaneously, the one that gets through first to get the gate money.
The third and best is for you to telegraph Mr. Bryan and find out direct
from him what his understanding is as to the date."
The first or the last of the propositions would have suited me
perfectly; for I should have been delighted to listen to Mr. Bryan
whether I was paid for it or not--and most assuredly had Mr. Bryan
himself laid claim to the date no power on this earth could have lured
me into a dispute over its possession. I am too proud of this life to
risk its uncertain tenure for the brief glory of an hour on a preempted
platform.
I am glad to say that before dusk the complication was cleared off; for,
the third alternative having been accepted by the committee, Mr. Bryan
was caught on the wire, and replied instantly to the effect that he was
to lecture that night on some such subject as "The Curse of Wealth" at
Palm Beach, where many sufferers from that particular blight are
annually gathered together in large numbers. The skies immediately
cleared, and I went out that night before a packed house, the unwitting
beneficiary of widespread advertising on Mr. Bryan's behalf, and enjoyed
myself very much; although as I sped along I could "spot" here and
there in the audience individuals who, having come to hear Mr. Bryan,
like Rachel weeping for her children, "refused to be comforted."
My only lasting regret was that my contract did not call for the payment
to me of fifty per cent. of the boxoffice receipts. I have no doubt
there were people there that night who thought, and possibly still
think, that I stole that audience. And perhaps I did; but I was no more
responsible for the theft than was poor little Oliver Twist, who found
himself at unexpected places at unlooked for hours through the efforts
of those "higher up." I may add too in all sincerity that if Mr. Bryan
himself feels, or felt, in any way aggrieved over what he might call my
"unearned increment" in listeners, I will gladly exchange fees with him.
I will unhesitatingly, at his request, and by return mail, send him my
check for the full amount received by me on that somewhat nervous
occasion if he will send me a postoffice order for the amount received
by him the evening after.
Embarrassments of a less poignant character frequently arise in the
matter of unexpected calls for service, for which the public generally
assumes the platform speaker to be necessarily always prepared, but for
which as a matter of fact no amount of preparation could adequately fit
any man built on the old-fashioned plan in respect to his nervous
organization. One of these affairs came into my experience a decade ago,
when, crossing the Atlantic Ocean on that high-rolling ocean greyhound,
the _Lucania_, I was drafted by an overzealous committee of arrangements
to preside over one of those impromptu entertainments got up on
shipboard for the benefit of the widows and orphans of those who go down
into the sea in ships. To these more than worthy enterprises gratitude
for benefits received has always made me a willing contributor; but to
participate in them has ever been a trial. I would rather lecture before
the inmates of a deaf and dumb asylum with a sore thumb.
The company aboard a transatlantic liner is always, to say the least,
"mixed" in the matter of nationality; and, while one might be willing to
"make a stab" at being witty before a gathering all English, all French,
all German, or Pan-American, woe be unto him who vaingloriously attacks
the risibles of a multitude made up of all these widely varying racial
elements! Their standards of humor are as widely divergent as are their
several racial strains, and one might as well try to sit on four stools
at once with perfect composure as expect to find the "Chair" under such
conditions comfortable. One has to acquiesce in such demands, however,
or be set down as disagreeable, and when the committee approached me in
the matter they received a much readier yes than I really wished to give
them.
The night came, and I found myself at the head table in the dining
saloon working for dear life to keep the thing going. There was a pretty
slim array of talent, and from one end of the program to the other there
was nobody to hang a really good joke on, even if I had had one to hang.
A chairman can always be facetious at the expense of distinguished
people like Chauncey M. Depew, Henry James, or Mr. Caruso, and "get away
with it"; but the obscure amateur cannot be handled with brutal
impunity. I think I may say truthfully that no man ever worked harder at
the pumps of a sinking ship than I did that night. And to make matters
worse there was a heavy rolling sea on, and, while I never suffer from
seasickness, the combination of motion and nerves made me uncomfortably
conscious of an insurgent midst as I forged hopelessly ahead.
Finally, however, there came a rift in the cloud of my despair. A
pleasant little cockney ballad singer who was coming over to America for
a season in vaudeville volunteered to sing a ballad. It was well sung,
and most pathetic. It depicted in dramatic fashion the delirium of an
old British veteran, who, as the hour of death approached him, was
fighting over again in fancy the battles of his youth. The refrain of
the ballad was _Bring me the old Martini, and I shall die in
peace!_--referring of course to the rifle that for a period of years up
to 1890 had been the official weapon of Tommy Atkins. I made the most of
so obvious a lead, and before introducing the next number on the program
thanked the singer for his dramatic rendering of so fine a story.
"But, my friends," said I, "that ballad saddens me in more respects than
one. I have long believed in international brotherhood. In common with
my friend Conan Doyle and others who have advocated the hands stretched
across the sea, I have been in sympathetic accord with the idea of
universal brotherhood; but now and then certain little things crop up
that, insignificant in themselves, show us none the less how radically
far apart we really are. This splendid old British warrior calling for
his Martini is a case in point, and I am sure my own compatriots here
to-night at any rate will realize the vast gulfs of separation that
exist between the Britons and ourselves when I ask them what they would
bring to a dying American soldier, delirious or otherwise, if he were to
call for a Martini."
The point took with the Americans; but the others, charming Frenchmen,
delightful Germans, cultivated Englishmen, stared at me in stolid
silence, and one or two of them shook their heads as if bewildered. It
was a hard situation, and I slammed the rest of the evening through
without further attempts at playfulness, retiring to the seclusion that
my cabin granted an hour later, resolved never again to serve as
presiding elder at a vaudeville show either on land or sea.
I felt almost as solemnly embarrassed as I did one evening in
Pennsylvania, later, when my lecture was opened with prayer and I heard
a good clergyman begging the Lord to "show His mercy upon the audience
gathered here," to "protect them from all suffering, and in His
infinite wisdom, if it were His will, to enable the speaker of the
evening to rise to his opportunity."
But there was an after result of that Martini jest which more than made
up for the depression that followed its failure to strike home. I write
of it, however, with some diffidence; for I am convinced that some
reader somewhere will observe that the incident is only another
variation of Senator Depew's famous tale of the Englishman who wanted to
know what really was the matter with the mince pie. As a matter of fact
it is the twin brother of that famous anecdote; but, while I am
perfectly willing to think the Depew story really happened, I know that
mine did, and I therefore record it.
The morning following the impromptu concert I was pacing the deck of the
steamer when one of the more distinguished passengers aboard, an English
army officer, who occupied at that time, and still holds, an important
post in British military circles, stopped me.
"Mr. Bangs," he said, holding out his hand, "I want to thank you for a
charming evening last night, and to express my admiration for the
delightful way in which you carried off your difficult honors. It was
really most interesting."
"Thank you, General," said I. "That is very nice to hear. I thought it
fell rather flat."
"Not at all, not at all," he rejoined; "though, to speak quite frankly,
there was one of your jests that I--I--I didn't really get. What humor
you have, sir, I think I appreciate. During a period of convalescence in
the Transvaal somebody sent me a copy of your 'House Boat on the Styx,'
and I--I--I found it very amusing; but this joke last night--after the
little chap had sung that ballad--about the dying veteran you know--it
quite escaped me. Er--_what would they bring an American soldier who
called for a Martini?_"
"Well, General," said I, restraining an impulse to be amused, "I might
explain, and explain and explain the point to you, giving you a chart in
full detail, exploiting the theory of the thing as fully as possible,
without satisfactory results. It is a case where an object lesson will
demonstrate in a minute what no amount of abstract argument could convey
in a year. If you will come with me into the smoking room, I'll show you
exactly what nine out of ten people in America would give to a soldier
crying aloud for a Martini."
[Illustration: "But what was the point of this little joke last night?"]
We repaired accordingly to the smoking room, and in response to my order
the steward shortly placed two misty Martini cocktails before us.
"There you are, General," said I, smiling, "that's what!"
He gazed at the Martinis a moment, and then he fixed his handsome eyes
on me. There was a merry twinkle in them, and after he had swallowed
the object lesson he leaned over with a broad smile and spoke.
"I am very much afraid, Mr. Bangs," said he, "that that idea you
Americans have that we British are sometimes a trifle sluggish in our
perception of the subtler points of an American jest, bristling as they
often do with latent significance, is not altogether without
justification. In order to show you how completely, how fully, I
appreciate the excellence of your witticism I would suggest that _we
have two more_."
I draw no conclusions of an invidious nature from this little episode;
for I recall with pain, and some contrition, an American audience in a
prohibition section of one of our Eastern States before whom I had the
hardihood to tell that story on a hot summer night three years ago, only
one of whose six hundred members saw the point, and he didn't dare laugh
for fear that by doing so he might risk his reputation for sobriety--or
so he informed me for my consolation later in the evening as he and I
zig-zagged together down an ice-covered mountain-road to the railway
station in a rattling motor car driven by a chauffeur who had apparently
confounded his own stomach with the gasoline tank.