From Pillar to Post Part 3

"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 sh.o.r.es 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 t.i.tle 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "If there's anything you want to know about Darwin's Origin of Species, you ask me!"]

"And _now_, my friend," he said, his eye flas.h.i.+ng 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 p.r.o.ne 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 sc.r.a.pes 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 s.h.i.+ft for ourselves.

I have been in many a sc.r.a.pe 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, s.h.i.+ning 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 c.o.c.ktail 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 grat.i.tude, 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 gla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.als, 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 subst.i.tute to be had within reach. What to do became a most embarra.s.sing 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.