"SLINGS AND ARROWS"
One's democracy receives a pretty severe test on the road, and I am
indeed sorry for the man who is always so solicitous for his own dignity
that the free and easy habits of the American of Today affront him. The
lecture platform is no place for what Doctor Johnson's friend Richard
Savage would doubtless in these days have characterized as "the tenth
transmitter of a foolish pride."
A people like ours, made up of a hundred million sovereigns, and
actuated for the most part, in their social intercourse at least,
by a spirit of fraternity, mixed with a very decided inclination
to be facetious, forms a somewhat bristling environment for the
supersensitively self-centered. If such a one contemplates the invasion
of the lyceum territory, as a friend and brother let me advise him to
spend at least a year in some social settlement where he may be
inoculated with sundry useful social germs, as a preventive of much
misery ahead. He must get used to much familiarity of a sudden sort, and
realize fully that our American world, while it respects ability, and
withholds from it no atom of its due appreciation, is in no particular a
respecter of mere persons.
In respect to "having to be shown" we are by a large majority "from
Missouri," and it will never do for the lyceumite to try to hedge
himself about with any fences of false dignity. The palings of those
fences may be sharp, and connected with barbed wire; but the American
citizens of the hour walk through them, or vault them, as easily as if
they were not there. And it is all very harmless too; for no man's real
dignity has ever yet suffered from any assaults other than his own.
I recall an incident of my travels in the Dakotas some years ago that
brought this situation home to me very vividly. I was on my way to a
county seat in one of those vast twin commonwealths on a rather sluggish
way train, and found among my fellow travelers three very live human
beings who had apparently just met after a long separation. One of them
was a rather stout little man, with a fresh, boyish face; another was a
tall and spare ferret-eyed individual who might have posed as an
acceptable model for a picture of Sherlock Holmes; and the third was a
well built young giant, a veritable blond Samson, full of the boisterous
spirits of young manhood.
The three sat across the aisle from me, and inasmuch as Nature had not
seen fit to supply their vocal organs with soft pedals, or pianissimo
stops, I became an unwitting, though not unwilling, listener to their
conversation. It was amusing, clean, and bristling with good-fellowship,
though not wholly Chesterfieldian in character. Finally the Sherlock
Holmes man, turning to the stout little chap, who was sitting next to
the car window, observed:
"Well, old man, you're lookin' a heap better than ya did the last time I
saw ya."
"Yes," said the stout little man, "I'm feeling better. I've been on a
diet for the past six months."
And here the stalwart young blond Samson playfully interposed. "Well, it
was about time, ya big, fat stuff!" he said. "Ya had a stummick on ya
big enough for sixteen men." Whereupon he proceeded to jam the little
man's derby hat down over his eyes.
Ordinarily this would be regarded as a rather commonplace, unenlightened
conversation; but its application to my point came the following
morning, when, having several hours to spare before departing for other
scenes, I went into the county courthouse to watch the litigation in
progress there. It was a scene full of interest, and the proceedings
were conducted on a plane of dignity quite in keeping with the highest
traditions of the bench, everything going on decently and in order. But
the interesting and possibly amazing thing about it to me was the sight
that greeted my eyes in the person of the Sherlock Holmes man of the day
before, conducting an eloquent argument before the stout little man of
the train, who was no less a person than--_the Presiding Justice_! And
the young giant who had called him a big, fat stuff, and jammed his hat
down over his eyes, was the _court stenographer_!
I had the pleasure of lunching with all three of them later in the day,
and a finer lot of true-blue American citizens I have not met anywhere
else, before or since.
If one has any purely physical peculiarity of an obvious nature, he must
get reconciled to having it used as a hook for his discomfiture, or his
delectation, according as his own attitude toward the slings and arrows
of life causes him to take them. In my own case perhaps the most
conspicuous personal idiosyncrasy I present physically to the eye of the
casual beholder is an almost abnormal lack of hirsute adornment; always
a favorite point of attack by facetiously inclined chairmen, by whom I
have been eloquently likened to the "imperishable Alps" for that I
lacked "vegetation" on my "summit," to a "heliograph on the Hills of
Letters," and by one I was called "the legitimate successor of the
lamented Bill Nye, the Original Billiard Ball on the Pool Tables of
Modern Humor."
Most of my delectable misadventures in respect to this deficiency have
naturally occurred in the barber shops of the nation, and it has been
surprising to me, as an interested student of American humor, to note
how full of variety are the spontaneous outbursts of the Knights of the
Razor everywhere upon that seemingly barren topic.
One barber in Wisconsin, to whom I facetiously complained that he
should not charge me full price for a haircut when there was so little
to cut, came back immediately with, "Ah, but you see I had to work
overtime to find it!"
Another in Boston, after shaving me, inquired, "Now how do you want your
hair brushed?"
"Brush it back like that young man's in the next chair," said I,
pointing to a Harvard student with a perfect mop of hair, resembling a
huge yellow chrysanthemum, which the neighboring artist was brushing
laboriously back from the youthful forehead.
"Humph!" said my friend. "I'll try; but, take it from me, _it'll take a
blistering long time to brush your hair back_!"
But the readiest bit of repartee that I recall in respect to this
shortcoming was that of a Philadelphia barber two years ago, who was
trying to make me presentable for my audience that night in the
Witherspoon Hall University extension course, where I was to deliver a
series of lectures on American humorists.
"Now," said he, running his hand over the back of my head after he had
attended to my other needs, "how do you want your hair fixed?"
"In silence, and without humor," said I. "I am approaching my fiftieth
year in this world, and since thirty I have been as you see me now. In
the course of those twenty intervening years I have heard about every
joke on the subject of baldness that the human mind has been able to
conceive at least fifty thousand times."
"I guess that's right," said he. "You are pretty bald, ain't you?"
"I am, and I am not at all ashamed of it," I returned. "My baldness has
been honestly acquired. I have not lost my hair in dissipation, or by
foolish speculation, but entirely through generosity of spirit. _I have
given my hair to my children._"
"Gee!" he ejaculated with fervor. "_You must have the divvle of a large
family!_"
I made use of that incident in my lecture that night as a convincing
demonstration that whatever had happened to the humor of the
professional humorist, as a natural gift of the American people that
branch of humor known as repartee was still running strong.
Intentionally or otherwise, I think the best joke ever perpetrated upon
me in respect to my lack of capillary attraction occurred at
Bellingham, in the State of Washington, up near the Vancouver line, back
in 1906, when I made my first trip to the Pacific Coast. I was the
victim that season of a particularly distressing window card, got up in
a great hurry from a most unsatisfactory photograph, and designed to
arouse interest in my coming. It greeted me with grinning pertinacity
everywhere I looked.
I am skeptic on the subject of window cards anyhow. I could never
convince myself that printed cuts are really effective instruments of
publicity, and I vow with all the fervor of which I am capable that they
are a nuisance and a trial to what the public call "the talent." I also
know that in at least one instance they bade fair to work adversely to
my interests, as was shown in a letter received by me many years ago
from an unknown correspondent in Kansas City, who addressed me thus:
MY DEAR SIR,--I inclose herewith a copy of a so-called photograph
of yourself published in this morning's Kansas City "Star," and I
want to know if you really look like that. The reason I write to
inquire is that yesterday was my little boy's birthday, and his
grandmother presented him with a copy of one of your books. I
haven't had time to read the book myself; but I have taken it away
from Willie, and shall keep it pending your reply, _for if you do
look like this, you are no fit person to write for children_.
I must confess that a single glance at the muddy reproduction of a long
discarded photograph convinced me that my naive correspondent was not a
whit more careful of his parental responsibilities than the situation
justified. I might readily have passed, if that photograph were
accurate, for a professional gambler, or a highly probable future
candidate for the Rogues' Gallery.
But, whether the platform worker is helped or retarded by this
indiscriminate plastering of public places with his counterfeit
presentment, committees seem to think it necessary, and we therefore
provide them with the most pulchritudinous pictorial composition that
Art, unrestrained by Nature, can produce.
But the one I used in 1906 was a most unflattering affair, and I grew
heartily sick of it as my tour progressed. At Bellingham it was
oppressively omnipresent. It seemed as if I had erupted all over the
place. It greeted me in the railway station when I descended from the
train. Two of them hung in the hotel office when I entered, and as I
walked up the street after luncheon I overheard sundry unregenerate
youths remark, "There he goes!" and "That's him!" and "Oh, look who's
here!" derisively, until I could almost have wrung every juvenile neck
in town. On one corner I found it in a laundry window, labeled, "John
Kendrick Bangs at the Normal School Tonight," and placed immediately
beneath this was a brown paper placard inscribed in great, red-chalk
letters with the words, "HELP WANTED." Farther up the street I found it
in a millinery shop window, pinned beneath a composite creation of
Bellingham and Paris which was not particularly becoming to my pictorial
style.
But the climax was reached when I found it in a drug-store window, where
the window dresser had placed it over another placard, the advertisement
of a well known patent remedy. My picture covered the whole of the
patent medicine placard except its essential advertising line at the
bottom, and as I stood there staring at myself through that plate glass
window my grinning countenance stared back at me unflinchingly, and
underneath it was the legend,
HIRSUTERINE DID THIS AND WE
CAN PROVE IT.
In gratitude to the perpetrator of that horrific joke let me say that I
have used the incident as the opening anecdote in my Salubrity lecture
ever since, and I really believe it has had as much to do with making me
_persona grata_ to my audiences as any other feature of my discourse.
[Illustration: "My grinning countenance stared back at me
unflinchingly."]
A tolerably effective arrow that struck fairly on the bullseye of
over-self-appreciation came to me out of the dark, of a well intended
compliment in a prominent New Jersey city several years ago. I had
lectured before a fairly appreciative audience, seated conspicuously in
the midst of which was a young man whom I recognized as the very
courteous and affable room clerk of the hotel at which I was stopping.
He and his friends formed a nucleus of appreciation which more than
compensated me for the barbed glances of one or two unwilling auditors
dragged thither reluctantly, probably from more alluring indulgences in
bridge or draw poker at their clubs. Both my heart and head expanded
under the influence of their continuous enthusiasm, and my emotions of
satisfaction were intensified when on my walk back to the hotel I heard
the friendly room clerk, stalking just ahead of me, exclaiming
enthusiastically:
"Didn't I tell you he'd be good? By George! I read one of his books
once, and I've wanted to see him ever since."
It was all very nice, and I hugged the pleasant intimations of his
remark to my breast all through my dreams that night. But the morning
brought disillusionment, and a mighty poignant shaft entered into the
soul of me. After eating my breakfast I stepped to the hotel desk to pay
my bill, and was there beamingly greeted by the room clerk.
"Well, Mr. Bangs," said he, with outstretched hand, "that was a fine
talk you gave us last night, and I enjoyed every minute of it. But I
knew it would be good."
"Thank you," said I, my chest expanding a bit.
"I've only read one of your books," he went on; "but it gave me a lead
on you. I don't want to flatter you, but--well, _it was the funniest
book I ever read_, and I've been wondering if you would write your
autograph in it for me."
"Surely," said I, not only willing to please him, but quite anxious to
see which of my books it was that had filled him with such enthusiasm.
"I have it here," said he, taking the volume out of a drawer.
"Good!" said I. "Let's have it."
He handed it to me, and I glanced at it. _It was a copy of Jerome K.
Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat, not to Mention the Dog!"_
"No flattery at all," said I, my growing conceit falling back to par.
"I'm glad you like it."
And then for the first and only time in my life I committed forgery. I
took the book to a writing table near at hand, and inscribed the flyleaf
with "Appreciatively yours, Jerome K. Jerome." And as I left the hotel
the last sight that greeted my eyes was my kindly deputy assistant host
studying that inscription with a look of extreme bewilderment on his
screwed-up countenance.
Apropos of this incident it is rather curious how frequently my name and
that of Jerome K. Jerome have been confounded. I have always considered
it a compliment, and I sincerely hope Jerome himself will not mind it. I
suppose the identity of our initials J. K. is responsible for it, and
possibly the fact also that Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat" and my own
"House-Boat on the Styx" were published at about the same time. One of
the most amusing incidents based upon this confusion of identity
occurred in California last spring. I was spending Easter Sunday at that
remarkable hostelry, the Mission Inn at Riverside, feeling that in some
way despite of my desserts I had got into heaven, and quite convinced
that I could stand an eternity of it if the particular atmosphere of
that wonderful Sunday were typical of life there. The inspiring Easter
sunrise service on Mount Rubidaux was over, and I was resting
comfortably in the office when a young woman paused at my side, and
said,
"You will excuse me for speaking to you, sir, but your face bothers me."
"I am very sorry, Madame," said I, "but it has bothered me too for over
fifty years."
"Oh, I don't mean that way," she answered quickly. "I mean that I can't
place it."
"Well," said I, trying to smile, "you really don't have to. It is
already located."
"But I don't know where I have seen it before," she pleaded.
"Nor do I," said I, "but I think I can reassure you on that point.
Knowing myself as I do I can assure you that it must have been in a
perfectly respectable place."
"I wish you would stop fooling," she retorted, a trifle impatiently. "I
want to know who you are. You see I'm of a rather nervous temperament,
and when I see a familiar face and cannot remember the name of the
individual who--er--who goes with it, sometimes it keeps me awake all
night."
"It would be too bad to have that happen," said I, "and inasmuch as I am
not at all ashamed of my name I shall be delighted to tell you what it
is. It is Bangs--John Kendrick Bangs."
"Oh--I know," she cried, her perplexity fading away, "You are the man
who wrote 'Three Men in a Boat.'"
And the dear lady seemed to be so pleased over the honor of meeting so
distinguished an author that I really hadn't the heart to undeceive her.
I have always thought of my young friend the room-clerk far more kindly
than of another New Jersey host whose airy nonchalance in what was to me
a moment of some seriousness struck me as being almost arctic in its
frigid non-acceptance of responsibility for untoward conditions. I had
put up overnight in his jerry-built hostelry, and all had gone well
until breakfast time. I was seated at table enjoying my frugal repast,
when without warning from anybody I found myself the sudden recipient of
a heavy blow on the top of my head, and upon emerging from the rather
dazed psychological condition in which the blow left me discovered that
I was covered from head to foot with plaster, and that my poor but
honest poached egg had become a scrambled one, mixed with the impalpable
dust of a shattered bit of molding.
A glance heavenward showed whence my trouble had come. A section of the
ceiling about four feet square had come loose, and had landed upon me.
I could think of no better way to voice my protest against such an
intolerable intrusion upon my rights of privacy at mealtimes than by
giving the hotel manager an object lesson then and there of what was
going on under his roof. So I rose from the table and walked directly to
the office just as I was.
"Great Scott!" said my host, as I loomed up before him like a glorified
ash heap. "What's happened to you?"
"A part of your condemned old ceiling has fallen on me, that's what!" I
sputtered somewhat wrathfully.
"Oh, that's it, eh?" he replied, with a smiling grace which I hardly
appreciated at the time. "Well, we don't do that for everybody, Mr.
Bangs," he added; "_but seeing it's you we won't make any extra
charge_."
I thanked him for his consideration. "I'd like to buy this hotel," I
added.
"Well, it's for sale," said he. "Like to run it yourself?"
"No," said I. "I thought it might be some fun to buy a Panama fan and
blow it down."
[Illustration: "I was the sudden recipient of a blow on top of my
head."]
With which we parted forever. I have returned to the gentleman's
bailiwick several times since; but never again have I entered the
portals of that hostelry, for fear that by the careless dropping of my
tooth-brush or a cake of soap I might cause the complete collapse of the
structure, with the possible destruction of innocent lives; though if I
were assured that in falling it would land only on that landlord's head
I think I would willingly go out of my way to hire an aeroplane some
night and drop a pebble upon its roof from a height of three or four
feet. This is not so vindictive as it seems, either; for it would not
hurt that landlord over-severely. You could drop a much heavier weight
than that hotel upon any bit of solid ivory within reach without hurting
the ivory unduly.
A less sordid, and indeed wholly inspiring, incident along similar lines
occurred three years ago at Georgetown, Texas, when on a terrific night
in February, which I shall never forget, I stood for a few minutes face
to face with what might have proved an appalling tragedy. As I look back
upon the incident now it seems to me to have been at once the most
thrilling, and at the same time the most stimulating, moment of my life.
I had arrived at Georgetown early in the afternoon, and simultaneously
with my coming--and, as some of my critics may intimate, possibly
because of it--there arrived also one of those dreaded windstorms known
in that section of the world as a norther. Perhaps the Texans are so
used to these outbursts of Nature that they take them as all in the
day's work; but to myself, unused to anything more boreally disturbing
than an occasional nor'easter on the Maine Coast, it was extremely
disturbing. I did not dare walk on any of the sidewalks, fearing that
the loudly rattling signboards of commerce might be precipitated upon
me. One of the best liked literary friends of my younger days had passed
from intellectual brilliance of a most promising sort into permanent
mental darkness through the falling upon his head of a swinging sign in
New York, and I had come to regard such possibilities with dread.
The Muse and I consequently spent the afternoon indoors in a quivering
but substantial and well kept hotel, whose courteous landladies neither
the Muse nor I will ever fail to remember with affectionate esteem. As I
rode in an omnibus to the lecture hall that night, I rejoiced in the
heaviness of the vehicle, which otherwise must have been overturned by
the heavy blasts to which it was subjected.
When I reached the college I found the auditorium on the third floor of
the main building in almost total darkness, the only light coming from
an oil lamp standing on a piano at one end of the stage. The wind had
put the electric lighting apparatus temporarily out of commission; but
students were at work upon it, and I was assured that all would be well
if I would defer my lecture for a little while. To this of course I
consented; for, however pleasing it may be to talk to one person in the
dark, there is no pleasure in addressing a multitude of people into
whose eyes one is unable to look.
After fifteen minutes of waiting the electric lights suddenly gleamed
forth, and I was gratified to see before me an audience of substantial
size, made up for the most part of students, with a fair proportion of
the townspeople scattered about here and there. The college was a
coeducational institution, and the boys and girls were in fair measure
paired off in congenial fashion.
With the restoration of the light the president of the college stepped
to the front of the platform and presented me to the audience, after
which I rose and approached the footlights to begin. But never a word
was I permitted to speak; for as I started in the howling wind outside
seemed to re-double in its fury and intensity. There came a sudden loud
grinding and ripping sound, and a huge part of the roof was lifted
bodily upward, and then dropped back with a crash. One heavy beam fell
squarely in one of the aisles without injury to any one, though two
feet off on either side it would have killed the occupants of the aisle
seats, and from all parts of the great room big chunks of plaster and
lathing fell in upon the audience.
There was present every element of a tragedy of fearful proportions; but
from that assembled multitude of young people came not even a scream,
and on every side I saw stalwart young Texans of To-day and To-morrow
rise up from their seats, and _lean over the girls sitting crouched in
the chairs beside them, taking all the weight and woe of that falling
ceiling upon their own manly shoulders_! It was a magnificent exhibition
of readiness of resource, self-control, and unselfish chivalry. Almost
instantly with the first shock the president of the college, with a
calmness at which I still marvel, rose from the chair behind me and
confronted the gathering.
"Now, my young friends," said he, speaking with amazing rapidity, each
word enunciated as incisively as though spoken with lips of chilled
steel, "remember--this is one of the emergencies you are supposed to be
trained to meet. There is no telling how serious this situation is; but
let us have no panic. Rise and walk out quietly, and without too much
haste."
The youngsters rose and marched out of the hall in a fashion that would
have delighted the soul of a martinet among drill masters, down three
flights of stairs to the campus, silently, and without the slightest
outward manifestation of the fear that must have been in the hearts of
every one of them.
There had appeared in one of America's best magazines only a few months
previously a scathing arraignment of the young American of To-day, in
which the girls were indicted as being frivolous, lacking in
self-control, and full of selfishness, and the American boy was held up
to public scorn as knowing naught of respect for authority, and wholly
deficient in the quality of chivalry for which the youth of other times
had been noted. I wished then and I wish now that the good lady who
spoke so witheringly on that subject could have witnessed what I looked
upon that night in Texas. I think she would have modified her utterance
at least, if indeed she would not have changed her point of view
completely. She would have made her assertions less sweeping, I am
convinced; for she would have learned from that episode, as I have
learned from my contact with the youth of this land, not only in Texas
but elsewhere, that save for a superficial element, fortunately not very
large, the American youth of to-day, boy or girl, is in the main a
strong-fibered, self-controlled, unselfish, chivalrous product which
would be a credit to any nation, anywhere, at any time, past, present,
or future.
In conclusion let me say that when I returned to Georgetown the
following season to deliver my undelivered lecture I was introduced to
practically the same audience as "the man who brought down the house
without even opening his mouth."
Which shows that not only are youthful chivalry and self-control not
dead in Texas, but that American humor likewise is in flourishing
condition in that truly imperial State of our Union.