From Pillar to Post Part 12

"All right," said the intruder, starting to the door. "If it don't come to no moh'n ten dollahs, I'll do it. Up home in Ferginia, where I come from, it never costs moh'n five; but I'm willin' to go as high as fifteen. A c.o.o.n down hyah at my bohdin' house done give my wife some back talk this mornin', _an if it don't cost moh'n fifteen dollahs I'm gwine to throw the critter outen de winder_!"

X

HUMORS OF THE ROAD

It appears to be the habit of every age to lament its own dearth of humor, and in our own time we have not been exempt from the charge that we have no humorists. It is my own candid opinion in respect to this matter that we are confronted by a paradox in that we have so many humorists that in effect we seem to have none; so much of humor that in the very surfeit of it its brilliance does not appear; in short, that because of the trees we cannot see the wood.

A period that has produced a Dooley, and an Ade, and an Irvin Cobb, and a Bert Leston Taylor, is surely not poor in humorous possessions of a scintillating character, whether we demand that our humor shall be a product of pure fun or of profoundly serious thinking. J. Montgomery Flagg in picture and in text is as much a master of effervescent foolery as ever was either John Phoenix or Artemas Ward; and in the humor that is designed to interpret life itself I find an endless store of it in the works of Wallace Irwin, of Montague Gla.s.s, of Miss Edna Ferber, and of Mrs. Alice Regan Rice; the last two, by the way, forming a complete refutation of the preposterous notion that women are devoid of the sentiment that cheers but does not inebriate. And as for the wits, if Oliver Herford were as lonely among wits as he is unique, I should still feel that we were rich beyond measure in that form of humor which is for the most part intellectual, of the mind rather than of the emotions.

But even if the charge were true--which of course it is not--that we no longer have any purveyors of humor of the first cla.s.s upon whom we may rely for a service as regular as is our supply of milk, b.u.t.ter, and eggs, we could still lay the flattering unction to our souls that American life is full of humor. If any one doubts the fact, let him throw himself headlong into the Lyceum Seas and find out from personal contact. To me it seems to crop up everywhere, and whether I travel north, south, east, or west I find it in great abundance--humor conscious, and humor unconscious; humor of the mind, and humor of the heart, or pathos; humor of situation, and the humor involving a mere play upon words; humor in all its infinitely varied qualities, and of a character most appealing. Writing a short while ago of an alleged similar condition in another field of letters, that of lyric poetry, I permitted myself the following rather sentimental reflections:

No singers great are here to-day?

Perhaps! Let the indictment stand.

I hear no strong voice on the way, No lilt from some immortal hand; And yet as on the silver mere I float, and towering hillsides scan, Deep in my heart I seem to hear Again the merry pipes of Pan.

No lyrics worthy of the name Are sung to-day by living men?

Perhaps! Yet naught is there of shame That we have not old Herrick's pen, For as I wander 'neath these skies As fairly blue as skies can be And gaze into two special eyes, All life a lyric is to me.

With equal truth and sincerity I could say much the same in respect to humor, and indeed I might properly even go further. I could not perhaps say that all Americans, or even many Americans, are lyrists; but I should not fall far short of the mark were I to say that most Americans are humorists. In my travels I come across occasional "nonconductors,"

as a clever woman of my acquaintance once called a certain social light who was as impervious to wit as is the rhinoceros to the sting of a gnat; but they are few and far between. For the most part I have found natural born humorists on nearly every bush.

In a previous chapter I have confessed to some disappointment in the quality of the humor of the negro as I have encountered it in Southern climes; but there have been, nevertheless, delightful rifts in that cloud. I recall an aged son of Ethiopia who called for me one wintry morning at four o'clock to drive me from my hotel at Greenville, South Carolina, to the railway station. He was a ragged old fellow, and with his snowy, wool-covered head composed a study in black and white worthy of the brush of any of our best limners of character. He was as communicative as he was ragged, and confided to me at the very beginning of our acquaintance that he had moved away from Charleston to become a resident of Greenville because down in Charleston he couldn't eat "pohk" (which I took to be pork) without having to take to his bed; while in the more salubrious climate of Greenville he could "swaller a whole ham at a settin', an' nebber hyear a woid from dat old ham forebber after." His name, he told me, was "mos' gin'rally George"; but he "warn't biggetty" about what people called him, since he was willin'

to come "ef dey on'y jes' whistled."

The early morning hours were cold and dreary, and I found my fur-lined horse blanket, as I have come to call my faithful winter overcoat, none too warm. Noting George's rather inadequate provision against the chill winds, I advised him to wrap his dilapidated old lap-robe about his shoulders.

"Ah'm all right, Boss," he replied. "Don't yo' worry erbout me. Dis yere old obercoat o' mine ain't much to look at; but hit's on de job jes' de same." He gave a most amusing chuckle. "Yo'd ought to hyear mah fambly takin' on erbout dis yere old obercoat!" he said. "Dey's kind o' proudy folks, an' dey don't like it. Dey says. .h.i.t don't look neat; but Ah tell 'um Ah'm a gwine t' wear hit jes' de same, neat er no neat--_de undahtakah, he mek yo' look neat_!"

From which I deduced that George was not only a humorist, but in a fair way to qualify as a philosopher as well.

Two days later I happened to be at Atlanta, Georgia, over Lincoln's Birthday, and it pleased me beyond measure to find printed on the first page of one of the prominent daily newspapers of that beautiful city a three-column cut of Abraham Lincoln, with a suitable tribute in verse from one of America's leading syndicate poets. I had myself for reasons of taste, and in order to give no offense to my kindly hosts throughout the Southland, omitted from my discourse pa.s.sing references to certain great figures of the Civil War; but on seeing this very notable recognition by his old-time adversaries of the great virtues of our martyred President, I hesitated no longer in respect to these references, and from that time on reverted to the original form of my talk.

After eating my breakfast on this morning of the eleventh I dallied for awhile in the office of the ma.s.sive Georgian Terrace Hotel, smoking my cigar, and glancing over the news in the paper. As I was about to toss the paper aside a fine old type of your Southern gentleman seated himself on the divan alongside of me, and in the usual courteous fas.h.i.+on of the country gave me a morning salutation. I responded in kind, and then tapping my paper observed:

"That is a fine picture of Lincoln."

"Yes, suh, a verruh fine picture, suh," he replied. "I never had the honah of seein' Mistuh Lincoln, suh; but from all I hyear, suh, he must have resembled that picture pretty close, suh."

"It is a delight to me to find it in one of your Southern newspapers,"

said I, "especially in one so influential in the South as this."

"Yes, suh," he answered. "It shows that the South is not slow to recognize genius, suh, wherever it is found, suh. But," he added, "there is no occasion for surprise, suh. We have always appreciated Mr.

Lincoln's greatness down hyear, and we have admiahed him, suh; _though we have had reason to believe that durin' the late onpleasantness, suh, he was consid'rable of a No'thern sympathizah, suh_."

Conspicuous in my memory for both his conscious wit and his unconscious humor is a strapping negro I encountered at a junction down in Alabama last winter. I was marooned there for five weary hours, receiving at the hands of its natives as high a courtesy and as fearful food as I have ever yet had presented to me. The colored porter at the hotel had a face as black as the ace of spades, and as childlike and bland as it was black. He seemed to take a tremendous interest in me, especially in my fur overcoat, which he appeared to think must "ha cost as much as eight dollahs," and he plied me with questions as we stood on the railway platform waiting for my train into Birmingham for a full hour that nearly drove me to despair. I have not s.p.a.ce for that illuminating interchange of ideas in all its verbal fullness; but part of it ran in this wise:

"Whar yo' come from?"

"Maine," said I.

"Maine?" he repeated. "What's Maine?"

"Why, Maine--Maine is a State," said I. "And it's a nice one too," I added.

"Oh, yaas," he said. "Hit's ober yander, ain't it?" he continued, with a wave of his hand sweeping enough to take in the whole universe.

"Yes," said I, "away over yonder. It's down East."

"Got any children?" he queried.

"Yes," said I, "I've got two sons in Detroit, and--"

"Dee-troit, eh?" he interrupted. "Yaas, suh, Ah've heerd o' Dee-troit.

Dee-troit's a nice State too--a mighty nice State--a nice State to have two sons at, Ah reckon. So yo' was born in Dee-troit, was yuh?"

"No," I replied, "I wasn't born at Detroit; I was born at Yonkers--"

"O-o-oh! So yo' was born at Yonkers, was yuh? Yaas, suh--Yonkers! Ah don't know much erbout Yonkers; but Ah guess Yonkers is a nice State too, ain't it?"

"Well," I laughed, "yes--Yonkers is a pretty nice State too--what you might call a Comatose State; but--"

"Yaas, suh--Ah've heern tell dat Yonkers was one o' dem c.u.mmytoe States, an' Ah guess dat's a pretty good kind ob a State to be bohn in. What yo'

sellin'?" This with a hasty glance at my suitcase.

"Brains," said I.

"Lawsy me! Sellin' brains, eh?" said he. "Waal, suh, Ah'm sorry. Yo'

look so kind o' set up Ah thought yo' was a-sellin' seegyars. Yaas, suh--Ah'd hoped yo' was." He gazed wistfully along the s.h.i.+ning rails.

"Dem seegyar drummahs is mighty free wid deir samples, suh," he continued, "and Ah been a hopin' yo'd be able to spar' me a han'ful like de res' ob 'em does. But ef yo're dealin' in brains, hit ain't _likely yo' got enough to gib any away_."

I may add that his disappointment was short-lived; for before we parted I took him across to the general store that fronted on the railroad track, and by the judicious expenditure of a quarter bought him a supply of his favorite brand large enough to last him a week. A single one of them would have done for me forever.

Repartee has always been a characteristic gift of the American people, due no doubt to a political system that turns almost every community into a debating society at least once a year, and sometimes oftener.

Readiness of verbal retort has thereby become an inheritance that grows richer in the squandering of it. It has been a quality so conspicuous that it has led a great many people, justly or otherwise, to a.s.sert that there are more really good jokes to be found in the course of a year in the columns of the "Congressional Record" than in the cleverest of the world's comic papers. However this may be, I know that one of the zestful things about a lecturer's life is the jestful thing that lurks at his side almost everywhere he turns.

I have had many proofs of this in my own wanderings; some direct, and some at long range. An amusing instance of the long-range retort occurred some years ago when I found in my mail one morning a letter from a gentleman living in Wyoming, an entire stranger to me, who said that he had heard from a friend that I wrote after-dinner speeches for others as part of my professional work.

Somehow or other [he continued] I have managed to get a reputation as a wit which I don't deserve; but I've got to live up to it, or go under. Now it has occurred to me that since you are in the business of writing after-dinner speeches for others you might turn out three crackajacks for me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "If yo're dealin' in brains, hit ain't likely yo' got enough to gib any away."]

So, without beating about the bush any longer, I want to ask you what you would charge me for three ripsnorters lasting about a half an hour each, speaking at the rate of a hundred and fifty words a minute, on the subjects of "Our Glorious Commonwealth," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and "The Ladies." If your terms are not too high, I shall be glad to give you the order.

I cannot say whether my sensations upon reading this delightful communication were more of amazement or of amus.e.m.e.nt, but after due deliberation I decided to answer the letter in a facetious spirit.