From Pillar to Post Part 9

"All right, mister," said the engineer cheerfully. "If you prefer the company of rattlesnakes and Gila monsters to mine, go ahead--and may the Lord have mercy on your soul!"

I decided to remain.

VIII

CHAIRMEN I HAVE MET

Sometimes the Gentleman in the Chair is a Lady, but more often he is a man, and, strange to relate, contrary to the general impression of the comparative methods of the s.e.xes, the ladies are vastly more direct in their introductions than their Brothers in Suffering. Women are seldom oratorically inclined. Men are invariably so--or at least chairmen are.

And as a result an introduction to an audience by a woman is likely to become more of an "identification of the remains" than an illuminating explanation of the speaker's right to be where he is; while the men "pile it on" to such an extent that the lecturer has often to struggle immortally to make good the chairman's kindly declarations on his behalf.

Personally, with all due respect to the Lady Chairman, I prefer the masculine method: not because I like to hear myself exalted to the tipmost point of the blue vault above; for I do not. It is hard work to sit still before five hundred people with a smug expression of countenance and hear oneself compared to d.i.c.kens and Thackeray, and Shakespeare and Moses, to the distinct disadvantages of that n.o.ble quartet of literary strugglers; and I have never ceased to sympathize with Anthony Hope, who on a postprandial occasion some years ago when I was sitting next to him, after listening to a few eulogistic remarks by a speaker in which he was made to appear the greatest Light of Literature since the beginning of time, lifted the tablecloth, glanced under it, and in a m.u.f.fled tone murmured, "My G.o.d, Bangs! Isn't there any way out of here? I cawn't live up to all this!"

Nevertheless, I do prefer the men's method, because it gives me more time in which to study my audience, and, in so far as I may, adjust myself and my discourse to the special problem confronting me. In the one case (introductions by women) it is as if one were suddenly seized by the scruff of the neck and thrown overboard without even time to say one's prayers; in the other the victim is slowly and pleasantly carried upward from the level of fact on the wings of kindly fancy to a pinnacle of unearned increment of glory, and left there to shift for himself: to soar higher if he have afflatus enough to attain loftier heights, or to slide back to where he belongs as gracefully as may be.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Pile it on so thick that the lecturer has to struggle hard to make good."]

I have often thought as I have sat and listened to these delightful flights of eulogy--so like the obituary notices we read in the newspapers after a great man dies--of the great disadvantages of those upper realms. It is very lonely and cold up there, and while the old saw is undoubtedly correct, and there _is_ plenty of room at the top, let it be recorded by one who has more than once been summarily hauled thither as involuntarily as undeservedly, that it is elbow room only, with mighty little solid earth on which to rest one's feet. The poet who invented the expression "the giddy heights" knew what he was talking about, and one has but to go out on the lecture platform and try to stand gracefully on those abstract peaks to have it proved to his entire satisfaction.

But there is another reason why I prefer the chair-_man_ to the chair-_woman_, and it has to do solely with the technic of lecturing. No one who has ever lectured can deny the apprehension of the first five minutes of the effort. Those five minutes are perhaps the most critical period of the evening. If the attack is not right, the whole affair is likely to come down with a crash; for first impressions count perhaps more than they should with the average audience. If the attack is good, and the lecturer can "make himself solid" with his audience at the very beginning, structural weaknesses and an occasional dull or dragging moment will be forgiven later, because those who listen have come to like the speaker personally, and decline to let him fail unless he really insists upon doing so.

Now the technic of this attack, I should say if I were retained to write a Primer for Lecturers, involves the chairman most materially. He is the tangible hook on which the alert lyceumite almost invariably either hangs or supports himself in those first five minutes. Human nature is so const.i.tuted that people like a pleasantry at the expense of some person or of some thing with which they are personally familiar. It grows out of the love of the concrete--which is a failure of us all, I fancy--and in every community there are always at least two concrete things that are sure winners for the lecturer--the chairman of the evening, and the railway system upon which the inhabitants of the community depend. Jests broad or subtle at the expense of either are received with howls of joy.

On my first transcontinental trip, made ten years ago, I never failed to receive an immediate response from my audiences when I referred to the letters N. P. R. R., the abbreviated form for the Northern Pacific Railroad, as really signifying a "Not Particularly Rapid Route"; and in other sections of the country served by those charming corporations the shortest cut I know to the affections of the people is through a bald or ribald jest at the expense of the Erie or the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

The chairman, however, is an equally safe proposition. He is either a very popular man in town, or directly the reverse, and in either case his neighbors enjoy a little joke at his expense. Naturally the joke, to be successful, must have to do with something peculiar to the moment, which the lecturer must find in the chairman's opening remarks.

Obviously one cannot be so freely facetious with a woman as with a man, and if he has been properly brought up does not even wish to be so. So that the Lady Chairman invariably leaves the speaker with a restricted field of operations at the outset.

Of course in all these reflections I am speaking merely of the lecturer who seeks popular rather than academic favor, which is frankly my own case. I should infinitely prefer to find myself liked by a miscellaneous audience rather than by a limited company of scientificos who are professionally more interested in things of the head than of the heart.

It is better to be human than great, and I care more for Humanity than for the Humanities.

At a rough estimate I should say that in the last ten years I have been the beneficiary of the services of not less than eight hundred chairmen, and in that whole list I can recall but one that I did not like, and no doubt he was a most likable fellow. He was a clergyman and a man of information, if not education; but he seemed to think that because somebody had once intimated that I was a "humorist" (a t.i.tle that I have neither laid claim to, nor specially desired to win) I must naturally be reached only by a downward climb from his own dignified heights. There are individuals in this world who conceive humor to be a somewhat undignified pursuit, their own education in that branch of human action having been confined to a study of the antics of the circus clown, and they are likely to deny to humorists even the right to the use of correct English.

"Well," said this special chairman unctuously when we met for the first time, "you are from New York, I understand."

"I have been a New Yorker," I said noncommittally.

"I suppose you know Howells, and Mark Twain, and all that _bunch_?" he went on, condescending to use the kind of language with which he of course a.s.sumed I was most familiar.

And it was just there that I took a violent dislike to the man. The word _bunch_, as applied to Mr. Howells and Mark Twain by one of his presumed education was not pleasing to my soul, though I should have loved it from a cowboy. It was as if somebody had referred to "those talented _cusses_, Carlyle and Emerson," and I simmered slightly within.

"Well," I replied, "I've known Howells and his gang for ages--bunked with the whole kit and caboodle of 'em for nearly twenty years--and you can take it from me they're a nifty herd! But the other--who was the other man?"

"Mark Twain," said he.

"I seem to have heard the name somewhere," said I; "but I don't think I've ever met him, or at least I don't remember it. New York's a pretty big place, you know, and you can't be expected to know everybody. What was his line?"

I am not sure, but I think the reverend gentleman woke up at that point.

At any rate he gave me no clue as to Mark Twain's ident.i.ty. He turned away, and excused himself on the ground that he wanted to see if the audience was "all in."

"Don't bother," I called after him. "It will be _all in_ when I get through with it."

But he never cracked a smile. I presume there were refinements of slang with which he was not familiar.

As to the others, however, I find as I run the n.o.ble army over in retrospect that many have won their way into my affections, and none are remembered save pleasantly. Several of them stand out preeminently for acts of self-sacrificing kindness on my behalf; notably one gentleman in Iowa who drove me over a distance of eighteen miles after midnight through a raging blizzard, requiring the unremitting efforts of four st.u.r.dy horses to pull us through, in order that I might catch a train back East and be with my children at Christmas time, and he was not a particularly emotional man, or anything of a sentimentalist, at that.

I shall never forget the spur of his answer to a remark I made to him that night on our way from the hotel to the lecture hall. The snow was falling lightly when he arrived, but the distance to the hall was so short that we walked it. As we came to the public square I noticed that hitched to the white railing about the county courthouse that stood in the middle thereof were some thirty or forty teams, harnessed to farm wagons of various types, large and small. It was already after eight o'clock, and I was surprised to find the wagons there at so late an hour.

"Your people work late, Mr. Robb," said I, as we sauntered along.

"What do you mean by that?" he inquired.

"Why," said I, "those wagons over there. Isn't it a trifle late for your farmers to be in town?"

"Oh," he said, "those wagons--why no, Mr. Bangs. Those wagons are here for pleasure, not on business. They have brought in a good part of your audience. Some of your people to-night have driven in from as far as twenty miles to hear you."

My heart sank. "Great Scott!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Twenty miles, eh? On a night like this--I--I hope I'll be good enough for that."

"_I hope so!_" was his laconic response.

The rejoinder was as the p.r.i.c.k of a spur, and by its aid, as well as with the a.s.sistance of a delightfully receptive gathering of listeners who had traveled far to have a good time, and meant to have it anyhow--a characteristic of your Westerner--we pulled through in good condition.

When all was over this noncommittal Iowan bundled me up in a borrowed fur overcoat, and insisted on taking that all-night drive with me through the raging storm that I might be sent safely and rejoicing back to my youngsters awaiting my coming on the Atlantic coast. It was shortly after four in the morning when my train drew out of the distant station, and the last I saw of my kindly host he was standing on the railway platform, knee deep in the snow, in the spotlight of a solitary white electric lamp, hat in hand, and waving his farewells and good wishes for me and mine.

I rejoice to say that he has remained my friend over the eight or nine years that have since elapsed, and if by any chance he shall read these lines I trust they will serve to prove to him that my affection, as frequently expressed in my letters to him, is still quite as strong and as deep as one with his capacity for friendliness could possibly wish it to be. And I wish to add that his figure as it stands out in my memory has become a symbol to me of the kindness, and courtesy, and friendliness of the great-hearted people who dwell in what he and his fellows properly and pridefully refer to always as "G.o.d's Own Country."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The last I saw of my kindly host."]

Another Iowa chairman, whose charming companionship and courtesy I shall always remember, will not mind, I am sure, if I record here a most amusing "break" that he made at our first meeting, which, I hasten to add, he more than redeemed afterward when the stress and strain of the evening relaxed. He dwelt in what appeared to be a most flourishing little city in the northern part of the State. I had arrived there early in the afternoon, and was so much impressed by the clean-cut appearance of everything I saw that I lingered upon the streets long after I should have sought my couch to rest up for the evening. The streets were as clean as a whistle. The dwellings were attractive in design and setting, and the business blocks were of a dignified if not ma.s.sive style of architecture. Best of all, if I could judge from those I saw to-ing and fro-ing upon the streets, the people themselves were alert and active.

In view of all this apparent prosperity I was a trifle surprised when the chairman arrived at the hotel to find him rather depressed. He was a clergyman, and at first glance seemed to be suffering from profound melancholy; so very profound indeed that I deemed it my duty to try to cheer him up.

"What a fine, prosperous little city you have here, Doctor," said I with genuine enthusiasm. "I've put in the greater part of the afternoon looking the place over, and I tell you it has filled me with joy."

"Humph!" said he gloomily. "It looks prosperous, but--_it ain't_! It's a bank-made town. The banks got here first, and induced people to come and settle on easy terms, and the terms haven't turned out quite so easy as they might. There's hardly a man in this town that isn't up to his chin in debt."

"Oh, well, what of that?" said I, still resolved to win out on a tolerably hopeless proposition. "Of course debt is a bad thing; but sometimes it acts as a spur. Your people are a bright and brainy looking lot. It won't take them long to settle up."

"Oh, they look bright and brainy," he returned sadly; "but _they ain't_!

There isn't one man in ten 'll understand a half of what you say to them to-night."

"Look here, Doctor!" said I, beginning to wax a trifle chilly myself, especially in the regions of my pedal extremities. "What are you trying to do, discourage me?"

"Oh, no," he replied, with a mournful shake of his head. "If I'd been trying to discourage you, I'd have told you about our lecture hall. It's without any exception the meanest thing of its kind on the American continent. Why," he added, holding out his hands in a gesture of utter despair, "why, if we had a lecture hall that was only halfway decent, _we could afford to have somebody out here to talk to us that would be worth listening to!_"

The chairman who in the exuberance of his own eloquence forgets the name of the individual he is introducing, even though he has announced that that name is a "household word," is no creature of the imagination, and if the stories that are told of him seem hackneyed, it is not because they are so frequently told, but because they happen so frequently in the experience of all platform speakers, and in almost identical manner.