From Pillar to Post Part 6

"_Until her bosom must have made The bar she leaned on warm_

_almost without meaning_! Suffering Centipedes!" he cried indignantly.

"That man must have been brought up on the bottle!"

I think I may truthfully say that from that point on I listened to the old man breathlessly. Buchanan's monograph on "The Fleshly School of Poetry" though wholly out of sympathy with my own views has long been a favorite bit of literary excoriation with me, comparable to Victor Hugo's incisive flaying of Napoleon III, and to have it spring up at me thus out of the alkali desert, through the medium of this beloved vagabond, was indeed an experience. Instead of conversing with my friend, I turned myself into what theatrical people call a "feeder" for the time being, putting questions, and now and then venturing a remark sufficiently suggestive to keep him going. His voice as he ran on gathered in strength, and waxed tuneful and mellow, until, if I had closed my eyes, I could almost have brought myself to believe that it was our much-loved Mark Twain who was speaking with that musical drawl of his, shot through and through with that lyrical note which gave his voice such rare sweetness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Suffering Centipedes!" he cried. "That man must have been brought up on the bottle!"]

From Rossetti my new-found friend jumped to Whistler--to whom he referred as "Jimmy"--thence to Watts, and from Watts to Ruskin; from Ruskin he ran on to Burne-Jones, and then harked back to Rossetti again.

Rossetti now seemed to become an obsession with him; only it was Rossetti the poet instead of Rossetti the painter to whom he referred.

In a few moments the stillness of that sordid coach was echoing to the sonnet of "Lost Days":

"The lost days of my life until to-day, What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat Sown once for food but trodden into clay?

Or golden coins squander'd and still to pay?

Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?

Or such spill'd water as in dreams must cheat The undying throats of h.e.l.l, athirst alway?

I do not see them here; but after death G.o.d knows I know the faces I shall see-- Each one a murder'd self, with low last breath; 'I am thyself--what hast thou done to me?'

'And I--and I--thyself' (lo! each one saith)-- 'And thou thyself to all eternity.'"

His voice trembled as he finished, and a long silence followed.

"Pretty good stuff, that, eh?" he said, at length.

"Fine!" said I, suddenly afflicted with a poverty of language quite comparable to his own in the way of worldly goods.

"Takes you here, however," said he, tapping his forehead. "Makes you think--and somehow or other I--I don't like to think. I'd rather feel--and when it comes to that it's Christina Rossetti that takes you here." He tapped his left breast over his heart. "She's got all the rest of 'em skinned a mile, as far as I'm concerned. I love that 'Up Hill'

thing of hers--remember it?--

"Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

"But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for where the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that Inn.

"Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at the door.

"Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labor you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.

"Ah, me!" he said. "I've got a deal of heartening out of that, and then some day when things don't seem to go just right, I sing for my comfort that song of hers:

"When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green gra.s.s above me, With showers and dew-drops wet, And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.

"I shall not see the shadows.

I shall not feel the rain.

I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget."

The train had long since started on toward our destination, the old fellow discoursing gloriously as we ran along, I utterly unconscious of everything save the marvelous contrasts of that picture--a seemingly wretched vagabond, held in the grip of a relentless poverty, pouring forth out of the depths of a rich mind as rare a spiritual disquisition as I ever remember to have enjoyed. Our destination finally reached, I held out my hand to bid him good-by.

"I can't thank you sufficiently," I said, "for a wonderful hour. I want you to do something for me. You see you have the advantage of me. You know who I am; but I don't know who you are. Won't you tell me your name, that I may add it to the list of my friends?"

The old fellow's eyes filled with tears. He laid his hand gently on my shoulder. "My young friend," he said, his voice growing hoa.r.s.e and husky again, "_who_ I am is one of the least important things on the face of G.o.d's beautiful green earth. What is really important is the kind of man I am. _I am one of those unfortunates who started in life at the top of the ladder and moved in the only direction he thought was left open to him._"

He seized my hand, gave it a soft, seemingly affectionate pressure, and walked away, leaving me standing alone, and I have not seen nor heard from him since.

VI

BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENTS

In a previous chapter of these rambling reminiscences I have said that I defied any really human man to return from a lecture season in this country in a pessimistic frame of mind. To this defiance I would add another. I defy any man possessed of a hide anywhere short of that of a rhinoceros, or a head of a thickness less than solid ivory, to return from a tour of our country with any greater sense of his own importance than he is ent.i.tled to.

There are a good many plain truths spoken in the presence of the lecturer by the good people to whom he is consigned, especially in our delightfully frank West, where they seem to have acquired the knack of drawing a clean-cut distinction between the lecturer as a man and the lecturer as a lecturer. Discourtesy is never encountered anywhere. At least in the ten years of my platform experience, with nearly a thousand public appearances to my credit, I have met with it only twice, and on both occasions in Eastern communities; a proportion so negligible as to amount really to nothing. Hospitality to the man has always been cordial; the att.i.tude toward the lecturer respectful. But in the showing of this respect there is no slopping over, though now and then there is an atmosphere of reserve in its manifestation which serves the lecturer better in the line of criticism, if he is capable of sensing its significance, than any amount of outspoken condemnation.

There is one element in the work of the Man on the Platform that is in itself of the highest disciplinary value, and that is that in all circ.u.mstances _he must deliver his goods himself_. There is nothing vicarious about the operation. No subst.i.tute can relieve him of that necessity. The man who writes books, or makes shoes or motor-cars, can sit apart and let others face whatsoever blame may be visited upon a middle man for defects of workmans.h.i.+p; but for the lecturer there is no such happy s.h.i.+fting of responsibility. If people find his discourse dull, they either get up and walk out, or, as the saying is, they "go to sleep in his face."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The lecturer must deliver the goods!"]

Occasionally, however, an ostentatiously emphatic expression of disapproval gives the man on the platform a chance to redeem himself. It is told of Henry Ward Beecher that on one occasion something he had said proved so offensive to one of his auditors, who happened to be sitting in the front row of a large and reverberant auditorium, that the individual rose bruskly and walked out. As a sort of underscoring of his disapproval the protesting soul was aided by a pair of new shoes that squeaked so audibly as he strode down the aisle that they distracted the attention of everybody. Mr. Beecher immediately stopped short, and waited until the dissatisfied person had faded through the doorway and the last echo of his suffering boots had died away, and then, with a benignant smile, recited that good old nursery rime so dear to the hearts of our childhood:

Rings on his fingers, And bells on his toes; He shall have music Wherever he goes.

It was a bit of ready repartee that captivated the audience, and if there were present any others who later found themselves in a protesting mood it is pretty certain that they waited for a safer occasion upon which to manifest it. Mr. Beecher on his feet was never a man to be trifled with.

On a stumping campaign myself a number of years ago I was confronted by a somewhat similar condition. An allusion to a statesman whom I greatly admired elicited a decided hiss from a group of hostiles seated under the gallery of a rural opera house. I silenced the hiss by pausing in my remarks and appealing to the janitor to "turn off that steam radiator,"

since the hall was evidently already too hot for the comfort of some of the audience. It was not particularly deft, but it served the purpose, and we heard no more from that particular quarter for the rest of the evening.

It is a safer rule, however, for the speaker to try to conciliate the hostile element, and it has been a rule of mine for the last five years to endeavor to locate such centers of frigidity as may be found before me, and then direct all my energies toward "thawing them out." Popular as the platform is in all parts of the country to-day, there is always present in every community a small leaven of at least reluctant men who are dragged unwillingly to the lecture halls by their enthusiastic wives, when, if they were only permitted to have their own way, they would be resting tranquilly at home, slippers on feet, feet on fender, book or favorite newspaper in hand, and a sweet-scented briarwood pipe for company. It is not difficult to locate these sufferers. They are such conscious martyrs that they immediately betray themselves, and as a rule while my chairmen are introducing me to my audiences I scan the rows of faces before me in search of them.

They have certain unmistakable earmarks that betray them to the sympathetic eye--which, with all due modesty, I may claim mine to be; for, while I love lecturing, being lectured to or at, as the case may be, bores me to extinction. I am like those doctors who rejoice in the opportunity to amputate another man's leg, but would not give seven cents to cut off one or both of their own.

The first of these earmarks is the expression of the face, which is either one of hopeless resignation, or full of lowering, one might almost say vengeful, contempt, as if the owner of the face were calling down inwardly all the wrath of Heaven upon the lecturer in particular, and the whole lyceum movement in general. With both these expressions go arms tightly folded across the breast, as though the sufferer were really trying hard to hold himself in.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "They may 'go to sleep in his face.'"]