From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book

"Twenty-five dollars," said I.

"All right," he said, pulling a well-filled wallet from his pocket, and counting out five five-dollar bills. "There's the stuff."

I thanked him, and drawing my check handed it over to him. He took it, and glanced at the signature.

"What?" he exploded. "The Idiot?"

This was the title of one of my books.

"Guilty!" said I.

"Here, you!" he cried, pulling his wallet again from his pocket, and holding it wide open, displaying a tempting bundle of ten-dollar bills within. "Here – just help yourself!"

And yet there are people in this world who ask if "literature" pays!

About the most Samaritan of the Good Samaritans I ever encountered I met in February last in one of the most flourishing of our northwestern cities. He was a Samaritan with what the modern critic would call a "kick" to him – or at least it struck me that way. As I made my way northward from Minneapolis to fill my engagement there I was seized with a terrific toothache which for the time being destroyed pretty nearly all my interest in life. The offending molar was far back in the region of the wisdom section, and inasmuch as it had been somewhat loose in its behavior for several days I decided to be rid of it. All my efforts to extract it myself were unavailing, and finally after a last desperate effort to pull it out myself I returned to my chair in the Pullman car and informed the Only Muse who upon this trip was Seeing America with me that our first duty on reaching our destination was to find a dentist and get rid of it.

"I hope you will be careful to get the right kind of a man," said she. "We can't afford any quack doctors, you know."

At this moment a charming woman seated on the opposite side of the car leaned over and said, "I do not wish to intrude, but I have seen how you were suffering, and I just overheard your remark. Now my son-in-law is a dentist, and we think he is a good one. He is coming to meet me at the station, and I think possibly he will be willing to help you."

I thanked the lady, and expressed the hope that he would.

On our arrival at the station the young man appeared as was expected, and my kindly chaperone presented the case.

"He has been suffering dreadfully, James," she said, "and I told him you would pull his tooth out for him."

"But, my dear mother," said the young man, "we are in a good deal of a hurry. We have an engagement for to-night. My office is closed, and we are not dressed for – "

"Thanks just the same," said I. "I am sure you would help me if you could – maybe you will do the next best thing. I can't lecture unless I have this confounded thing out."

"Lecture?" said he. "You are not John Kendrick – "

"Yes – I am," said I.

"Oh," said he, "that's different. You are our engagement. Come up to my office, and I'll fix you up in a jiffy."

So we marched five long blocks up to his office, where I was soon stretched out, and the desired operation put through with neatness and despatch.

"Well, doctor," said I as he held the offending molar up before me tightly gripped in his forceps, "you have given me the first moment of relief I have had all day. My debt in gratitude I shall never be able to repay, but the other I think I can handle. How much do I owe you?"

"Nothing at all, Mr. Bangs," he replied. "Nothing at all."

"Oh, that's nonsense, doctor," I retorted. "You are a professional man, and I am a stranger to you – you must charge something."

"Oh, no, Mr. Bangs," said he, smilingly. "You are no stranger to me. I have been reading your books for the past twenty years, and it's a positive pleasure to pull your teeth."

V

A VAGRANT POET

The inimitable and forever to be lamented Gilbert, in one of his delightful songs in Pinafore, bade us once to remember that —

Things are seldom what they seem —
Skim-milk masquerades as cream;
Highlows pass as patent-leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers.

The good woman who sang this song – little Buttercup, they called her – was in a pessimistic mood at the moment; for had she not been so she would have reversed the sentiment, showing us with equal truth how sometimes cream masquerades as skim milk, and how underneath the wear and tear of time what outwardly appears to be a "high low" still possesses some of the glorious polish of the "patent leather." Everywhere I travel I find something of this latter truth; but never was it more clearly demonstrated than when on one of my Western jaunts I came unexpectedly upon an almost overwhelming revelation of a finely poetic nature under an apparently rough and unpromising exterior.

It happened on a trip in Arizona back in 1906. My train after passing Yuma was held up for several hours. Ordinarily I should have found this distressing; but, as the event proved, it brought to me one of the most delightfully instructive experiences I have yet had in the pursuit of my platform labors. As the express stood waiting for another much belated train from the East to pass, the door of the ordinary day coach – in which I had chosen to while away the tedium of the morning, largely because it was fastened to the end of the train, whence I could secure a wonderful view of the surrounding country – was opened, and a man apparently in the last stages of poverty entered the car.

He was an oldish man, past sixty, I should say, and a glance at him caused my mind instinctively to revert to certain descriptions I had heard of the sad condition of the downtrodden Westerner, concerning whose unhappy lot our friends the Populists used to tell us so much. He looked so very poor and so irremediably miserable that he excited my sympathy. Upon his back there lay loosely the time-rusted and threadbare remnant of what had once in the days of its pride and freshness been a frock coat, now buttonless, spotted, and fringing at the edges. His trousers matched. His neck was collarless, a faded blue polka-dotted handkerchief serving as both collar and tie. His hat suggested service in numerous wars, and on his feet, bound there for their greater security with ordinary twine, were the uppers and a perforated part of the soles of a one-time pair of congress gaiters. As for his face – well, it brought vividly to mind the lines of Spenser —

His rawbone cheekes, through penurie and pine,
Were shronke into his jawes, as he did never dyne.

The old fellow shambled feebly to the seat adjoining my own, gazing pensively out of the window for a few moments, and then turning fixed a pair of penetrating blue eyes upon me. "Pretty tiresome waiting," he ventured, in a voice not altogether certain in its pitch, as if he had not had much chance to use it latterly.

"Very," said I carelessly. "But I suppose we've got to get used to this sort of thing."

"I suppose so," he agreed; "but just the same for a man in your business I should think it would be something awful. Don't it get on your nerves?"

"What do you know about my business?" I asked, my curiosity aroused.

"Oh," he laughed, "I know who you are. I read one of your books once. I've forgotten what it was about; but it had your picture in the front of it, and I knew you the minute I saw you. Besides I was down in Tucson the other day, and – you're going to lecture at Tucson Tuesday night, aren't you?"

"I am if I ever get there," said I. "At this rate of speed I'm afraid it'll be season after next."

"Well, they'll be ready for you when you arrive," he chuckled. "They've got your picture plastered all over the place. It's in every drug-store and saloon window in the town. They've got it tacked onto every tree, hydrant, hitching post, billboard, and pump, from the railway station out to the university and back. I ain't sure that there ain't a few of 'em nailed onto the ash barrels. You can't look anywhere without seeing John Kendrick Bangs staring out at you from the depths of a photographer's arm chair. Fact is," he added with a whimsical wink, "I left Tucson to get away from the Bangs rash that's broken out all over the place, and, by Jehosaphat! I get aboard this train, and there sets the original!"

I laughed and handed the old fellow a cigar, which he accepted with avidity, biting off at least a quarter of it in his eagerness to get down to business.

"I'm not so bad as I'm lithographed," I said facetiously.

"So I see," he replied, "and it must be some comfort to you to realize that if you ever get down and out financially you've got a first-class case for libel against the feller that lithographed you."

He puffed away in silence for a minute or two, and then leaning over the arm of his seat he re-opened the conversation.

"I say, Mr. Bangs," he said, rather wistfully, I thought, "you must read a great deal from one year's end to another – maybe you could recommend one or two good books for me?"

It was something of a poser. Somehow or other he did not suggest at first glance anything remotely connected with a literary taste, and I temporized with the problem.

"Why, yes," I answered cautiously. "I do run through a good many books in the course of a year; but I don't like to prescribe a course of literary treatment for a man unless I have had time to diagnose his case, and get at his symptoms. You know you mightn't like the same sort of thing that I do."

"That may be so too," he observed coolly. "But we've got some time on our hands – suppose you try me and find out. I'm willin' to testify. Fire ahead – nothin' like a few experiments."

"Well," said I, "personally I prefer biography to any other kind of reading. I like novels well enough; but after all I'd rather read the story of one real man's life, sympathetically presented, than any number of absorbing tales concerning the deeds and emotions of the fictitious creatures of a novelist's fancy. I like Boswell better than Fielding, and Dr. Johnson is vastly more interesting to me than Tom Jones."