From Pillar to Post Part 13

I have your esteemed favor of Thursday last [I wrote], and beg to say that my regular charge for a single speech such as you require, suitable for delivery before a mixed gathering of ladies and gentlemen, has invariably been $1,000 in the past; but since your proposition is more or less on a wholesale basis, and business is slack, I will make an exception in your case and give you the special terms of $750 per, F. O. B. I must insist, however, that you regard these terms as strictly confidential; for it might involve me in serious complications if Mr. Choate, and Gen. Horace Porter, and Senator Blank were to learn that I was cutting rates.

They have been among my best customers for many years, and for their own sakes, as well as for my own, I do not wish to lose their trade.

This letter, which I felt tolerably sure would end the matter once and for all, was mailed, and within a week brought me the following telegraphic response:

_If you write Senator Blank's speeches, I don't want one from you at any price._

It added not a little to the poignancy of this retort that the telegram was sent "collect."

Another example of ready American facetiousness cheered a dull day for me last year in Tennessee. I was booked to lecture before a charming collegiate community at Blue Mountain, Mississippi, and to get there from Memphis was required to make a railway connection at a curious little town called Middleton. Middleton was an amazing concoction of piccaninnies, waste paper, inactive whites, and germ suggestion. Mr.

Goldberg, the cartoonist, would probably have referred to it if he had been along with me as the town that put the Junk in Junction, and upon its dilapidated railway platform I was compelled to wait for six mortal hours, hungry and thirsty, but fearing to a.s.suage the one or quench the other for fear of internal complications beyond the reach of medical science. If I had never believed in the hookworm before, I became an abject coward in the fear of it then.

Middleton's chief excuse for being appeared to be that it was the terminus of a featherbed affair called the New Orleans, Mobile & Chicago Railway, possibly in ironic reference to the fact that as far as I could learn it did not touch any point within two hundred miles of any one of those cities. I imagine that the mileage of the New Orleans, Mobile & Chicago Railway, or at least that particular section of it, was somewhere between thirty-seven and thirty-eight miles linear measure; though in the matter of jolting, careening, sliding, skidding, and galumphing along generally, its emotional mileage was incalculable, and the effect of a ride from Middleton at one end to New Albany at the other on the liver surpa.s.sed that of all the great transcontinental systems rolled into one.

From what I could gather in casual conversation with such bureaus of information as were available at Middleton its trains ran anywhere from twenty-seven hours to a year and six months late. I will say on behalf of its management, however, that after trying it once I concluded that it was a miracle it ran at all. Three or four times in the course of my waiting I decided to give up the quest of Blue Mountain altogether and to return to Memphis; but hope has always sprung eternal in my breast, and each resolution to quit the game was superseded by some kind of optimistic spiritual rea.s.surance that held me true to my obligations.

Ultimately my optimism was justified, and a panting little combination of whirring wheels and iron rust wheezed into view, dragging a pa.s.senger car of I should say the vintage of 1852, and a shamefully big and modern freight car after it. A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Locomotives would have had everybody connected with the inst.i.tution indicted then and there, and I was again strongly inclined to give up my effort to get through. It seemed the very height of inhumanity to ask that poor little engine to carry my added weight. I should have much preferred to lift it tenderly in my arms from the track, and put it into the freight car, and pull the train to Blue Mountain myself; at any rate, that seemed the most reasonable and the only really kind thing to do at the moment.

Nevertheless I boarded the train, having first invested fifty cents in twenty-fours' worth of postal card accident insurance at the ticket office window and mailed it to my executors. In a couple of hours we were sliding and b.u.mping down grade through an oozy mora.s.s over tracks ballasted with something having the consistency of oatmeal mush liberally diluted with skim milk. We slid over the first half-mile in about fifteen seconds, thanks to the weight of that shameless freight car at the rear, which pushed the rest of us along at a terrific rate of speed; but things were averaged up when we came to an upgrade, which, on a rough estimate, I should say we accomplished at the rate of about a mile a week. After awhile the conductor appeared--a nice, genial, kindly soul, who inspired me with a confidence I had not yet managed to acquire in the road itself. He was so smiling and serenely unaffected by what loomed dark as dangers to me that I was soon feeling rather ashamed of myself for being so full of coward fears, and it was not long before in my mind I was singing those beautiful lines of Browning:

The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; G.o.d's in his heaven-- All's right with the world!

And as I was humming this comforting a.s.surance to myself there broke upon the silence of the car the following colloquy:

"Howdy, Sam!" this from a fellow traveler sprawled comfortably in the seat just back of me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Locomotives would have had them indicted then and there."]

"Howdy, Jim!" this from the smiling conductor.

"How long you been with this hyere road, Sam?" asked the fellow traveler.

"Seven years last March, Jim," replied the conductor.

"_My Gord, Sam!_" cried the fellow traveler, sitting up. "_This must be your second trip!_"

As for subtle humor of a rather sly sort, perhaps the best example I know of was a little jest perpetrated at the expense of one to whom I shall refer as my Only Muse, who, I rejoice to say, accompanies me upon most of my trips. She was with me once in Iowa when we were stranded at an interesting little railway crossing for several hours. The place consisted wholly of some stock-yards, a general store, and a small wooden cot which pa.s.sed for a hotel, in which we found every comfort that courtesy could provide, even if some of the rather material necessities of life were lacking.

We took dinner at the hotel. Seated opposite us at table were two farmers, one a handsome middle-aged man, and the other a man wizened and gray, with a weather-beaten face, and a kindly eye; seventy years old, I imagine, but still as active and as interested in life as a boy, as all Iowans, irrespective of foolish years, seem to be. One or two little courtesies of the table started an acquaintance, and naturally enough I was asked my business in the State.

"Oh, I am out here lecturing," I said.

"Well, we're farmers," said the old man.

Now the Only Muse takes a great interest in farming. She raises herself most of the vegetables we consume at home, and one of my ambitions has always been to set her up as the presiding Deity over a real farm some day when the lure of the platform no longer operates to drag me off into distant scenes. She had taken a course of lectures on farming at Columbia University, and was enthusiastically full of the subject at the time. Wherefore it happened that when my vis-a-vis announced that he was a farmer it was the best kind of opening for the conversational powers of the Only Muse--which to say the least are generally adequate--and she made the most of it. She talked of apples, corn, cows, and bees. She dilated eloquently upon the value of persistent "cultivation," and as I sat listening admiringly to her evidently masterful handling of her varied subjects I suddenly became conscious of the old man's eye twinkling across the table at me, and then, as the Only Muse paused to catch her breath for further disquisition, he leaned forward, and with seemingly innocent curiosity asked:

"_Which one o' ye does the lecturin'?_" I trust that the outburst of merriment that greeted his query conveyed to his mind with perfect clarity the fact that there are no professional jealousies in my household.

At any rate this, with the wonderfully witty response of a distinguished railway president to certain reflections I had made in an after-dinner speech on his road, appeals to me as one of the most delicately subtle bits of wit I have encountered anywhere in real life--which life on the road undoubtedly is.

That the reader may judge for himself if the railway president was wittier than the Iowa farmer or not, I will close this chapter with a short narration of that incident.

The gentleman in question was Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore & Ohio, who on an occasion in New York listened courteously to some facetious observations I had to make on the subject of the wonders of the B. & O., and two days later heaped coals of fire upon my head by sending me by mail a pa.s.s over his railroad. I was of course delighted; but before using it decided to read carefully the "conditions and limitations named on the reverse side," under which it was issued. I turned the treasure over and read the following:

This pa.s.s will be accepted for transportation WHEN ACCOMPANIED BY CERTIFICATE of Company's Agent, attested by office-stamp, that the bearer has presented evidence of being HOPELESSLY INDIGENT, DESt.i.tUTE, AND HOMELESS, or an INMATE OF A CHARITABLE OR ELEEMOSYNARY INSt.i.tUTION, a SOLDIER or SAILOR about to enter either a NATIONAL HOME or "A HOUSE BOAT ON THE STYX," or otherwise qualified as ent.i.tled to free transportation under Federal or State Laws.

I do not remember whether or not I ever thanked Mr. Willard for this courtesy; but if I did not I do so now, and beg to a.s.sure him that I would not exchange that little doc.u.ment to-day for a controlling interest in his road. I am not much of a business man, but I have a keen sense of relative values.

XI

MINE HOST

Whoe'er has traveled life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.

So wrote William Shenstone, a minor poet of England in those brilliant days that produced Addison, and Swift, and Richard Steele, and our own great philosopher and humorist Benjamin Franklin. I used formerly to sympathize deeply with the poet's sentiment, so charmingly expressed, and in a certain way I do so still; but in the last decade, involving so much wandering, and so many inns of varied degrees of excellence, I have found that my sympathy with Shenstone's thought has undergone considerable modification. I should indeed sigh to think that I had found my warmest welcome at an inn; but I should hesitate to indorse any sentiment that would seem to underestimate the value of the whole-souled, genial character of Mine Host, as I have encountered him in all parts of the United States.

While I cannot truthfully say that I think we Americans have a genius for hotel management, such as our cousins of Switzerland, for instance, appear to have, I can at least say that I believe we have a natural apt.i.tude for a peculiarly delightful kind of spontaneous hospitality, of which I have been for years the grateful beneficiary. If a hotel were a thing of the spirit solely, I should say that the hostelries of the United States, taking them by and large, approximate perfection; but unfortunately one cannot impart tenderness to a steak with cordial smiles, freshness to an egg with a twinkling eye, or the essential properties of coffee to a boiled bean with a pleasant word; and if in the South and Middle West it were possible to sweep a room clean with a welcoming wave of the hand, and to set a mobilized entomology in full retreat with the fervor of an advance in friendliness, I should not think so often, perhaps, upon the possible duties of local Boards of Health in respect to the American hotel situation.

I hasten to add, however, that this situation, hopeless as it at times appears to be, brings forcibly to my mind that ancient chestnut set forth in the sign in the Far Western church--

DON'T SHOOT THE ORGANIST: HE IS DOING THE BEST HE CAN--

for I verily believe that in nine cases out of ten the landlords of the nation are in point of fact doing the "best they can," and in many instances in the face of heart-breaking discouragement. They are themselves quite aware of their deficiencies, as was once clearly established in the inscription I saw in front of an Oklahoma caravansary as I pa.s.sed through on the Katy-Flyer, to the following effect:

THE SALT AND TOOTHPICKS SERVED AT THE SAINT JAMES ARE AS GOOD AS THOSE AT ANY HOTEL IN AMERICA

Our American communities, unfortunately, have not yet awakened to the economic fact that a good hotel is about as valuable an a.s.set as a town can have. An enterprise that might very properly, and for the general good, be subsidized by the Board of Trade, or even by the town itself, is left to private initiative; usually with barren, if not bankrupting, results.

New England is slowly awakening to this need, and within the last few years a number of fine hostelries have been established, with the backing of real civic interest, and under trained management; but very few of even the most progressive Western and Southern Communities seem as yet to have taken so vital a matter into consideration. They have good will and courtesy enough among them to run a thousand highly acceptable caravansaries, and I have sometimes wished that some of their individual qualities might in some way be engrafted upon our more sumptuous Eastern hotels, where one is able to get anything one is willing to pay for, except the feeling that somebody somewhere in the hotel is glad he came.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "If it were possible to sweep a room clean with a welcoming wave of the hand--"]

I do not know how many thousand library buildings our great Ironmaster has caused to be built in this country--and we who write books have cause to be grateful to him for having provided such rarely beautiful mausoleums for the final interment of our cherished productions--but I have often wished that his generous pursestrings had been loosened on behalf of hospitality, rather than exclusively for the perpetuation of current fiction and books of reference that n.o.body ever uses. Before the trusts are finally curbed I hope that one or two more swollen fortunes may be produced, and that the owners thereof may be inspired to carry the light of living into communities in need of something of the sort, by building hotels for them, in which clean rooms suitably aired, and good food properly cooked, may be provided for those who have to travel, and are so const.i.tuted that they cannot eat poetry, nor sleep comfortably between the sheets of the lamented William James's incursions into pragmatic philosophy, dry as they unquestionably are.

How next to impossible it is for our good landlords in certain sections of the land to conduct their business profitably was once brought to my attention by a little incident in a town not many leagues from Atlanta, Georgia. I found myself seated one evening at table opposite a traveling man of most marvelous gastronomic fort.i.tude. For his supper he ordered cereal and cream, two fried eggs "done on both sides," some bacon, "a little of that steak," German fried potatoes, some baked beans, a bit of kippered herring, milk toast, preserved peaches, hot biscuit, sponge cake, and a cup of coffee. After the commissariat had responded faithfully, and the table had been duly decorated with the serried ranks of "bird-bath" dishes containing the bulk of the enumerated edibles, a third party arrived, and an old friends.h.i.+p between himself and my vis-a-vis was renewed.

"Well, Tommy, old man, it's ninety-seven moons since I saw you last!

How's things?" said the newcomer.

"Oh--pretty good," said my vis-a-vis wearily. "Business is good enough; but I _ain't feelin' very well myself_."

"What's the trouble--caught cold?" asked the newcomer.

"No," said the other. "I'm just feelin' sort o' mean--_my stummick don't seem just right. I guess I been workin' too hard_."

"You'd ought to eat milk toast," said the new arrival.