From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book

"We don't care so much for your lecture, Mr. Bangs; but we like you, and we're going to have you back."

Whether or not my plan was successful I shall not attempt to say; but I may be pardoned, perhaps, for recording here one of the most delightful compliments I have ever had, paid me by a threadbare workingman who came up behind me as I was leaving the park that afternoon, and put his arm through mine as he spoke.

"Are you goin' to speak here to-night, Brother?" he said.

"No," said I. "I am hurrying off to Boston on the five o'clock train."

"Well, I'm sorry," said he. "I wanted to come out and hear ye again."

Bearing upon the cultivation, or lack of it, of the average American audience, I recall a remark made to me several years ago by a well-known poet from the shores of Britain, who had come here to lecture on the Celtic Renaissance.

"I have had a most delightful surprise," said he, "in the wonderful amount of real culture that I have found in the United States, and especially in the smaller communities. Why, do you know," he added, "when I first started in on my work I supposed that I should have to spend at least half of my time explaining to my audiences just what a Renaissance was, and the rest in consideration of the Irish movement; but I hadn't been here a week before I discovered that for the most part the people I was to talk to knew quite as much as I did about the history of the movement, and I had all I could do to shed any new light on it whatsoever."

He had, fortunately for himself, made the discovery at a critical part of the "lecture game," as some people delight to call it, that it was up to him to keep climbing, and not waste any of his valuable time trying to descend to a lower level, if he wished his discourse to be favorably regarded in this country – a discovery that I devoutly wish some of our modern editors and theatrical managers, who think they must cater exclusively to a "lowbrow" audience, as they call it, a clientele made up out of the whole cloth of their own imaginings, might make.

Our wonderful West frequently affords illuminating incidents demonstrating the real truth, as discovered by our distinguished visitor. I remember going a few years ago into a small community in Iowa, where possibly the English lecturer would have looked for very little in the way of what he would consider learning. When sitting in the office of the chairman of the lecture committee, a particularly alert young man, a lawyer, and a graduate of the Harvard Law School, the door opened, and a splendid specimen of physical manhood, a typical pioneer in appearance, stalked in. The chairman introduced me to him.

"Mr. Bangs," said he, "I want you to know my father."

The caller gave my hand a grip that even now makes my fingers ache every time I think of it. He then led me to a comfortable, leather-covered arm chair, and, after almost shoving me into its capacious depths, seated himself directly in front of me.

"Sit down, young man," said he. "I want to talk to you."

"Fire ahead!" said I. "And thank you for calling me a young man. I've been feeling a trifle old for a couple of days."

"Well, you are young compared to me," he said. "I'm eighty."

"Good Lord!" said I. "You don't look over sixty, anyhow."

"No," he smiled, "I don't – but that's Ioway. I've been farmin' out here for nigh onto seventy years, and we're all too busy to grow old. We live forever in Ioway. It's the grandest country on the footstool."

I didn't feel at all inclined to dispute him, considering his more than six feet of towering height, the fresh, healthful hardness of his weather-beaten face, the breadth of his shoulders, and depth of his chest. I contented myself with agreeing with him. And I didn't have to work hard to do that, either; for I have known magnificent Iowa as a most salubrious State for many years.

"Well, you see, sir," I said, "we can't all pick out our birthplaces. I was born in New York through no choice of my own. Some are born at birthplaces, some achieve birthplaces, and others have birthplaces thrust upon them – which last was my case."

"Same here," said he. "I was born in Ohier; but my folks moved out here when I was a babby. I've lived here ever since – and I'm glad of it. Of course I hain't had your advantages in gettin' an eddication – most o' mine's in my wife's name – but I've got some, and I've had to work so dam hard to get it that sometimes I think I appreciate it just a leetle more than you Eastern boys do who have it served to you on a silver platter. I didn't know how to read till I was twenty-five."

"I congratulate you," said I. "Considering the sort of things the greater part of our young people are reading to-day, I wish that condition might prevail a little more widely than it does."

"That's it," said he. "When a thing comes too easy we're not likely to make the best of it. When I think of how I had to sweat to learn to read you don't ketch me wastin' any o' my talents in that direction on trash."

"Then," I put in, "the chances are you've never read any of my books."

"Not many of 'em," he answered; "but one or two folks I know has read 'em, and they tell me there's nothin' deelyterious about 'em. But I tell ye it was some work for me to get the knack o' readin'; but when it come it come! Ye see, when I first come out here they wasn't any schools, and they wasn't any too much help around in those days, either. What with farmin', and diggin' food out o' the ground, and fightin' Injuns, they wasn't much spare time for children to spend in schools, even if we'd a had 'em. But along about the time I was twenty-three years old we started one. We built a little schoolhouse, and then we sent East for a schoolmarm, and when she come she boarded up at our house, and I celebrated by fallin' head over heels in love with her."

"Good work!" said I.

"You bet it was good work!" he blurted out, with an admiring glance at his son. "It was the best work I ever done, and the best part of it was she liked me, and the first thing we knew we got married. Well, sir, do you know what happened then? You're a smart man, and you won't need many guesses. It was the very thing we might ha' foreseen. The idee o' me, the husband o' the schoolmarm, not knowin' how to read – why, it – was – simply – pree – posterous!"

I don't believe Colonel Roosevelt ever put more syrupy electricity into the first syllable of his famous "dee-lighted" than that old gentleman got into the pre of his "preeposterous."

"Yes, sir," he ran on, "and there was no way out of it but that she should teach me to read. And she did! It was a tough proposition for that wonderful teacher of mine; but her patience finally pulled us through, and at the end of about a year I was ready to tackle 'most any kind of stunt in the way of a printed page. And then the burning question arose. Now that I know how, what in Dothan shall I read? That's a big problem, my friend, to a young feller that has earned his right to literature by the sweat of his brow. I wasn't goin' to waste any of my new gift on flashy stuff. What I wanted was the real thing, and one mornin' the problem was solved. A copy of a weekly paper come to the house, with an advertisement in it of a book called 'The Origin of the Species,' by a feller named Darwin, costin' two dollars and a half. That was some money in those days; but somehow or other that title sounded good and hefty, and I sent my little two-fifty by mail to the publisher, and within a week or two 'The Origin of the Species' was duly received, and I went at it."

"And what did you make out of it?" I asked, my interest truly aroused.

"Nothin' – not the first dam thing at first," said the old gentleman; "except it made me wonder if I hadn't lost my mind, or something. I sat down to read the thing, and by thunder, sir, I couldn't make head nor tail out of it! I'd always thought I knew something about the English language; but this time I was stumped, and it made me mad.

"'There's something happened to me,' I said to my wife. 'I've read this darned first page here over five times, and I'm blest if I can get a glimmer of anythin' out of it.' She smiled and advised me to try something easier; but, 'Not – on – your – life!' says I. 'I've been through fire and famine and wind and blizzard in my day. I've seen the roof over my head burnt to a cinder by savages, and I've fit Injuns, and come nigh bein' scalped by 'em, and in all my life, my dear,' says I, 'I hain't never been stumped yit, and I don't preepose to begin now, specially by a page o' printed words, said to be writ in the English language —not – on – your – life!'

"So I went at it again. I read it, and I reread it. I wrastled with every page, paragraph, and sentence in that book. Sometimes I had to put as much as five days on one page – but by Gorry, son, when I got it I got it good, and when it come it come with a rush – and now– "

The old man paused, drew himself up very straight, and squaring his shoulders he leaned forward and put his hands on my knees.

"And now, my friend," he said, his eye flashing with the joy of victory, "if there's anything you want to know about Darwin's Origin of the Species – you – just – ask – me!"

IV

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

If there is any man in this wide world who doubts the beauty and heart significance of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, he need only go out upon the lecture platform to have his eyes opened. I know of no workers in the whole field of human effort this side of tramphood itself who need more often the intervention of the Good Samaritan to get them out of trouble than the followers of that same profession.

Indeed, I shall not even except the profession of the Hobo; for there is a certain license granted to this latter sort of Knight of the Road that is denied to us of the Lyceum Circuit. We are prone to forgive a hungry tramp for breaking into a casual hencoop in search of the wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of an empty stomach, and when his weary bones demand a bed there are numerous expedients to which he may resort without loss of dignity. I doubt, however, that if Dr. Hillis, or the Hon. Champ Clark, or my humble self, were ever caught red-handed with a farmer's fowls dangling by their legs from our fists, or were to be discovered stealing a nap in the soft seclusion of a convenient hayloft, we should get off quite so easily as do poor old Dusty Rhodes and his famous colleague Weary Waggles.

Even as do our less loquacious brothers who foot it across country, and earn their living by making after-dinner speeches to sympathetic farmers' wives, so also do we more advanced members of the Fraternity of Wanderers have often to throw ourselves upon the tender mercies of others to get us out of the unexpected scrapes into which the most careful of us sometimes fall. Life is ordinarily no very simple thing, even to the man who lives all his days in one spot, and knows every curve, crook, and corner of his special surroundings. How much more complicated must it become, then, to him who has to change his spots every twenty-four hours, and day after day, night in and night out, readjust himself to new and unfamiliar conditions!

For the most part our troubles, such as they are, have to do with the natural perversity of train schedules, or unexpected visitations of Nature which will disarrange the most carefully forecast calculations of men. In the machinery of our existence there are probably more human cogs involved, which require our own individual attention, than in any other known mechanism. Even the actor on the road is better looked after than are we; for he has a manager to arrange for his transportation, to look after his luggage, and to attend to all the little things that go to make or mar the comfort of travel while we of the platform go out wholly upon our own, unattended, and compelled at all times to shift for ourselves.

I have been in many a scrape en route myself; but so far none of them has found me without some personally devised expedient for my relief, or the aid of a chance Good Samaritan, whose constant nearness in the hour of need has convinced me that there are many more of his kind in existence than most people are willing to admit. I have almost gone so far at times as to believe in the "intervention of Providence," and would quite do so did I not feel the idea somewhat belittling to the Divine Intelligence that orders our goings out and our comings in.

On one occasion in the Far West I was so close to a scene of actual murder that I might readily have been held as a material witness, and escaped that great inconvenience only by pursuing the exceedingly difficult policy of holding my tongue – always an arduous proposition for a professional talker. I have faced starvation on a delayed train in Oklahoma, starvation setting in in my case after fifteen hours without food, and been suddenly relieved by the wholly chance appearance, at the tail end of the train, dropping seemingly out of the mysterious regions of Nowhere, of an Italian driving a wagonload of bananas across the track, just as the train was starting along on another interminably foodless stretch; an Italian who with remarkably quick wit – in response to the lure of a new, shining silver dollar tossed into his wagon – heaved a bunch of his stock large enough to feed an orphan asylum on to the back platform.

I have even been threatened with complete annihilation, physical and spiritual alike, by a man big enough to carry out his threat, unless I would join him in a cocktail at six o'clock in the morning, and escaped my doom, not as a great many readers may think, by accepting the invitation, but only through the timely intervention on my behalf of the blessed gift of sleep, which descended suddenly, and without apparent cause, upon my convivial adversary before he had time to carry out his amiable intentions looking toward my removal from the face of the earth.

But there have been other times when nothing short of the sudden appearance of the Good Samaritan himself has saved me from disaster. Two of these instances I recall with feelings of gratitude, and I record them here with sincere pleasure, since it may be that my willing helpers may read what I have written about them, and learn from the record something of the lasting quality of my grateful appreciation of their courtesy.

The first of these incidents occurred in the distant city of Los Angeles on a memorable afternoon when I was to all intents and purposes stranded; not for the lack of ready money, but for the want of transportation necessary to get me from where I was to the haven where I was critically needed at that moment. It was a matter of making a train or losing a whole chain of profitable engagements, arranged in such sequence that if one were lost the others would in all probability go also.

I was due to lecture in the beautiful California city on a Wednesday evening, and was to go thence to Salt Lake City for a Friday night lecture. Unfortunately for me it happened that on Tuesday I was booked at Tucson, Arizona, and with a strange carelessness of consequences somebody had thrown a glass of water on the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and thereby completely demoralized the roadbed. I do not wish to libel that useful railway system; but at that time the casual impression of the traveler on the Southern Pacific was that its rails had been laid on water, and were ballasted with quicksand. It should be added in justification of the conditions that the irrepressible Salton Sea, a body of water that has no known parentage in the matter of sources, or real destiny in the matter of utility, and acts accordingly, had been on one of its periodic rampages, the proper handling of which had taxed to the uttermost the ingenuity of the engineers on whose shoulders the responsibility for the line rested. It was Nature who was to blame, and not the authorities.

At any rate, however, there were such serious delays on my way from Tucson to Los Angeles that, scheduled to lecture at the latter city at eight P.M. on Wednesday evening, I did not arrive there until four o'clock on Thursday morning, and even a Western audience will not submit to any such delay as that. Thanks to the quick wit of my principals, who stood to lose a considerable stake by my failure to appear, another lecture was arranged for Thursday afternoon at one o'clock, although my train for Salt Lake was scheduled to leave at two-forty-five. The plan was for me to take a carriage out to the lecture hall, about forty minutes' drive from the center of activity, to go upon the platform promptly at one o'clock, to condense my talk into one hour, to leave the platform at two, and drive hurriedly over to the San Pedro station, and catch my train with five minutes to spare.

The first part of the program was carried out to the letter, and at five minutes after two I was at the entrance of the hall ready for my drive to the station. But there was no carriage or vehicle of any other known sort in sight. Through some misunderstanding either on my part or on that of the local managers, the carriage that brought me out had not waited, and there was no substitute to be had within reach. What to do became a most embarrassing question. The succeeding dates had been arranged in such a way that if I failed to catch that train to Salt Lake City my whole tour would come down with a crash.

Fortunately there was a rather fine boulevard running in front of the hall, a rare temptation to speeders both in motors and with horseflesh; and as my managers and I were standing on the curb, expressing our opinion as to the intelligence of hackmen in general and ourselves in particular, and hopelessly scanning the horizon in search of relief, there suddenly emerged out of the gloom, coming along at a rapid pace, a horse lover, seated in a light wagon, and driving a big bay trotter of no mean abilities. He was striking nothing poorer than a two-forty gait, and as he loomed bigger and bigger as he drew nearer he looked like a runaway avalanche; but as he came the idea flashed across my mind that here was my only salvation. I therefore sprang out into the middle of the road, directly in his path, and waved my arms violently at him. The driver drew in his reins with a jerk, and man, horse, buggy, and all came to a sliding, grinding stop. I cannot say that his first remark was wholly cordial.

"What the dash is the matter with you?" he roared.

I panted out my explanation – how my carriage had not come, how much depended on my catching my train, and how completely I had relied on him.

"Oh, that's it, eh?" he said, amiably calming down. "I thought you'd escaped from a lunatic asylum or something. Jump in. I can't take you all the way to the station, because I've got an engagement myself at two-fifteen; but I'll land you at the hotel in a jiffy."

I needed no second bidding, and in a moment we were bounding along at breakneck speed in the direction of the city. We covered the distance that had consumed forty minutes before the lecture in twelve minutes, and all seemed well – only it was not well; for, arriving at the hotel, I found myself still fifteen minutes distant from the railway station, and not a taxi or other kind of cab to be had. What was more, the electric roads were blocked by a fire or something farther up the street. I was as badly off as ever – and then entered the Good Samaritan!

As I stood there in front of the hotel making sundry observations, most of them unprintable, concerning the quality of my luck, a man of fine appearance came out of the hotel and stepped quickly across the sidewalk to a large touring car that stood awaiting him by the curb. He opened the door, and after seating himself in the tonneau leaned forward to give his instructions to his chauffeur, when I was seized with the inspiration that here indeed was truly my White Hope. Again I took my chances. I sprang forward, laid my hand gently on his arm, and blurted out:

"Excuse me, sir, but my name is Bangs – John Kendrick Bangs. I am out here lecturing, and if I don't catch that two-forty-five train for Salt Lake City I shall lose half a dozen engagements. If you have ever read any of my books and liked them, sir, you will be willing to do me a service. If you've read 'em and not liked them, you'll be glad to get me out of town. Won't you be a Good Samaritan and give me a lift to the station? You're my only hope!"

"Sure thing!" he answered without an instant's hesitation, opening the door. "Get in – and, James," he added, turning to the chauffeur, "the San Pedro station, and never mind the speed limit."

I clambered into the car as quickly as I could, and the car fairly leaped forward.

"It's mighty good of you," said I breathlessly as we sped along.

"Don't mention it, Mr. Bangs," said my host. "Glad to be of service to you. I read your 'House-Boat-on-the-Styx' once with a great deal of pleasure; but there's one thing about you that I like a great sight better than I do your humor."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Your nerve, sir," he replied, handing out a cigar.

We caught the train with eight minutes to spare, and as it drew out of the station I realized possibly for the first time in my life that in my particular line of business nerve is a vastly better asset than nerves, and I have faithfully cultivated the one and resolutely refused to admit the existence of the other ever since, to my very great advantage.

It may not be without interest to record here that in spite of all my trials and tribulations at Los Angeles, the Salt Lake City engagement was lost. Our engine broke down in the wilds of Nevada, and we did not reach Salt Lake until long after midnight the following night. Nevertheless I kept my hand in; for in response to the request of some of my fellow passengers I delivered my lecture that night in the observation car of the stalled train in the Nevada hills, to an audience made up of fifteen fellow travelers, the train crew, and a half-dozen Pullman porters.

I hesitate to think of what might have been my fate had I employed similar tactics to get me out of such troubles in New York or Boston, or some other of our Eastern cities. The chances are that my name would have been spread upon the blotter of some police court as a disorderly person; but in our great West – well, things seem somehow very different out there. There are not so many sky-scrapers in that part of the country, and the horizon of humanity may therefore be a little broader; and perhaps too the strugglers out there are closer to the period of their own trials and tribulations than we are here in the East, and become in consequence more instantly sympathetic when they see the signal of distress flying before them.

The second incident occurred nearer home. It was in Ohio, at the time of the floods that wrought such havoc in Dayton and thereabouts in the spring of 1913. I had lectured the night before at Ironton, and on my way to Cleveland was to all intents and purposes marooned at Columbus. Much doubt existed as to whether traffic out of Columbus was at all possible, so completely demoralized were all the railroads centering there. It is a cardinal principle with lyceum workers, however, to make every possible effort to get through to their engagements at whatever inconvenience or cost. So in spite of the warnings of subordinate officials I took my chances and went out on a morning train which passengers took at their own peril, through scenes of dreadful desolation, and over a disquietingly soggy roadbed, until the train reached an Ohio city which I shall not identify by name here. While I have no hard feelings against it, or against any of its citizens, I cannot bring myself to speak of it in terms of "endearment," as I should much prefer to do.

At this point our train came to a standstill, and the announcement was made that it would be impossible to get through to Cleveland because all the bridges had been washed away. Motoring over for the same reason was out of the question, and the engagement was lost. I immediately repaired to the telegraph office and sent off several despatches – to the Cleveland people, announcing my inability to get through; to my agents, telling them of my plight; and to my family, assuring them of my safety. These telegrams broke my "financial back"; for when I had paid for them I found myself with only forty cents left in my pocket, marooned possibly for days in wettest Ohio, hungry as a bear, and not a friend in sight.