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

In the winter and spring of 1913 there was a great deal of work cut out for me in the Southern territory, and during my travels there, which involved the crossing and recrossing of every State in the section except Kentucky, from the Atlantic coast to the Mexican border, I encountered much in the way of human experience that is delightful to remember, and very little that I would rather forget. It was upon this trip that two incidents occurred which showed very clearly the difference between a cutting retort smilingly administered and that other kind of peculiarly rasping repartee, born of a soured nature that has confirmed its acid qualities by pickling itself in a mixture of equal parts of gloomy self-sympathy over fancied wrongs, and – well, not grape juice.

There is a kind of tonic dispensed in certain of our prohibition States by licensed drugstores and carried by suffering patients in small black bottles, secreted in their hip pockets, like deadly weapons – which indeed they are (whence, possibly, we get the term "hipped" as descriptive of the ailment of the sufferer) – which does not exactly mellow the disposition of the consumer, whatever glow it may impart to his countenance.

One morning I found myself on my way from Natchitoches, in Louisiana, a lovely survival of a picturesque old French trading post, a perfect home of roses, both human and floral, which will ever remain a garden spot in my memory, to Shreveport. It was in the middle of May, and the whole country was a delight to the eye, with its lovely greens and lush spring coloring. I was returning from a lecture before the State Normal School, and while sitting in the smoking car enjoying my weed was introduced to a gentleman (I use the word carelessly, and without positive conviction) whom everybody had been calling "Judge." I am glad to say that I did not catch his last name. I do not even know whether or not he was really a judge, or, if he were, what he was a judge of. He reminded me more of the judges I have read of in fictional humor than any I have ever seen on the bench, and from his general attitude toward his fellows on the train I gained a tolerably clean-cut impression that he tried his "cases" in solitary state, rather than in that more open fashion which is such a bad example to the young, and productive of that ruinously extravagant disease known as "treating." I may be doing the man an injustice, but I am none the less trying to sketch him as I saw him. He had the manner and manners of the solitary reveler, and the generally "oily," but not suave, quality of his makeup confirmed my impression that any love of temperance he might manifest was purely academic, or, as one of our leading statesmen might put it, "largely psychological." Desirous of starting things along pleasantly after my introduction to the judge, I remarked upon the marvelous beauty of the country.

"Everything is beautifully green about here," I said. "It is a positive pleasure to look out on those lovely fields."

"Glad you like 'em," said the judge, helping himself to a generous mouthful of tobacco.

"Well, you see," said I, "I come from Maine, Judge, and I am particularly fond of the spring, and we don't get ours until late. I guess," I added, "that in respect to that we are about a month and a half behind you people down here."

"Yes," said he explosively, "and, by God! you are fifty years behind us in every other respect!"

It was a kindly and tactful remark, and I was duly edified. If he had said it smilingly, I should have been happier, and would have been inclined to enter upon a half-hour of jovial banter on the subject of the respective merits of our several States; but there was a truculent self-confidence about his honor's "atmosphere" that foreshadowed little in the way of a satisfactory issue had I ventured to carry the discussion further. I simply withdrew within myself, like a turtle, finished my cigar in silence, and returned to my seat in the chair car, convinced that in whatever line of action the judge was really an expert – law, history, economics, or what-not – he at least knew how to put a cork in a bottle, and jam it in so tight that nothing could get out of it – I being the bottle.

As I sat for the rest of my journey in that chair car my mind reverted to another incident that had occurred two months earlier. The inviting causes were similar; but the party of the second part was a very different sort of individual. The judge was said to be prosperous, the owner of many acres of fertile sugar land, and had, or so I was informed, a professional income of fifteen thousand dollars a year. One would think he could have afforded to be genial under such conditions. The other was a man bent and broken under the stress of his years and his trials, coming home, after a lifetime of failure, to pass his remaining days, manifestly few in number, amid the scenes of his youth. What few locks were left him were gray, and he limped painfully when he walked. He had served on the Confederate side during the war, and still carried with him the evidences of sacrifice.

I met him on the railway platform at a little junction town in Southern Tennessee. I was en route to a small college town in Upper Mississippi. We had had a long and tedious wait upon the fast decaying station platform, hoping almost against hope that at least day before yesterday's train would come along and pick us up, whatever might be the fate of the special combination of wheezy engine and spring-halted cars due that morning. As I nervously paced the dragging hours away I noticed this old fellow limping anxiously about, making over and over again of everybody he met the same inquiry as to the probable arrival or non-arrival of our train; and now and then he would hobble with difficulty over to a small soap box, with a slatted top, which stood just outside the baggage room, in which there was imprisoned a poor, shivering, and I fancy hungry, little fox terrier, whining to be let out.

"Never mind, Bobby," the old man would whisper through the slatted top of the box. "'Taint gwine to be much longer now. We'll be home soon."

The kindly attitude of the old man toward the unhappy little animal touched me more deeply than his own poverty-stricken condition, and so, yielding to a friendly impulse, I stood by him for a moment and spoke to him.

"It's a long wait," said I.

"Oh, well," he said cheerfully, straightening himself up stiffly, "it's so near the end I ain't complainin'. I been waitin' fohty yeahs for this, Brother."

"Forty years?" I repeated.

"Yes, suh," he replied, "fohty long yeahs, suh. I ain't been home since the end o' the wah, suh. An' now I'm comin' back, an' I reckon after I git thar thar ain't a gwine to be but one mo' journey, suh, befo' I'm through."

"You mean – " I began.

"I'm comin' home to die, suh," he said. "Not that I'm a gwine to be in any hurry to do it," he added, with a winning smile, "but I'm tiahed o' wanderin', an' what's left o' my time hyah, suh, 'll pass mo' pleasantly back among the old scenes."

I endeavored to cover up my emotions by offering the old man a cigar.

"I thank you, suh," he said, taking it. "I'm very fond of a good seegyar, though I don't git 'em any too often, suh. Are you a Tennessee man, suh?"

"No," said I. "I come from Maine. That's a good way from here."

And then it came. The old fellow gave a great chuckle, and reached out his hand and seized me by mine.

"I want to shake your hand, suh," he said with rare cordiality. "The last time I see a Maine man, suh, was durin' the wah, an' I was chasin' him with a gun. He was a darned good runner; but I ketched him, an' I'm glad I did, fo' he was a dam sight better feller than he was a runner!"

I must confess that when later in the day I saw the old gentleman get off the train in the midst of a welcoming multitude of old friends, with his battered old suitcase in one hand, and the slatted soap box containing the yelping Bobby in the other – all his earthly possessions – I was glad to feel that he had come "home"; and as he waved a feeble but courteous adieu to me from the platform as the train drew out I knew that I had met a Southern gentleman of a peculiarly true and lovable sort.

One finds much in these little jaunts in the Southland to appeal to one's sense of humor; but after all there is much more that appeals to one's sympathies. I had the pleasure of riding once in Louisiana on a train in company with an old Confederate soldier, who made me as completely his prisoner in the shackles of affectionate regard as he might, because of his powerful build, have made me a prisoner in fact had we met face to face on the field of battle. He was a man of convictions; but he was always so thoroughly the honest-hearted gentleman in presenting his points of view that, although we differed radically upon almost every matter of present political interest, I found for the moment, anyhow, a sweet reasonableness in his principles. His manner was so calm, and gracious, and transparently sincere, that I found him wholly captivating.

His chance remark that he hoped to attend the great Confederate reunion shortly to be held at Chattanooga, or Chattanoogy, as he called it (there is always a soft, caressing accent in the real Southerner's discourse that changes a mere word or name into a term of endearment), naturally brought up a reference to the great conflict, and I took a certain amount of human pleasure out of the old man's present content with the general situation, as shown in the naïve statement with which he began to talk on the subject.

"You know, suh," said he, "I feel pretty well satisfied with the way things turned out, even though at the time, suh, I didn't want 'em to turn out just that a-way."

"We are undoubtedly stronger as a nation to-day than if it had turned out differently," I ventured.

"Yes, suh," he said. "If we'd got away, suh, it wouldn't ha' been long befo' the principle o' the right o' secession havin' been established, we'd all ha' been secedin' from each othah, suh; and after the States had done all the secedin' they could the parishes would ha' begun secedin' from the States; an' the towns would ha' seceded from the parishes – until the whole damn country would ha' landed in Mexico!"

"I never thought of it in that light before," I smiled; "but I guess you're right."

"An' that ain't all, neither, suh," he went on. "I'd ha' felt a great sight worse about it if we'd been licked, suh. If we'd been licked in that great fight, suh, I don't think I'd evah have got ovah it, suh."

I maintained a discreet silence; for I could not but feel that I was on the verge of a great philosophical discovery.

"When a fellah's licked, suh," the old man went on, "he just natcherly kain't help feelin' sore, suh; but if he's merely ovahpowahed, suh – why that's very different."

There may be minds to which that distinction is too subtle to be either obvious or convincing; but the more I have thought it over since the more has it seemed to me to involve a profound philosophy which would make the world happier were it more widely accepted by those suffering from reverses of fortune. To me there was a whole sermon in that brief utterance, and the difference between being "licked" and being "merely overpowered" has been one out of which I have derived no end of comfort myself in hours of difficulty. To be whipped is one thing; to be merely overcome is indeed another!

Nor was the old man's kindly feeling concerning the God of Things as They Are, as expressed in words, mere lip service; for in the course of our morning's chat other things developed which I am glad enough to put upon record for Northern eyes.

"I wish," said he, "that you might stay ovah hyah at my home a day or two, suh, and let me take you to one of our Post meetin's, suh. We'd make you more than welcome."

"Yank though I be, eh?" I laughed.

"Yes, indeed, suh," he replied. "We ain't got anything against you on that score, suh. My first meetin' with Yanks in a not strictly fightin' capacity was once when a half a dozen of 'em took me prisoner. I found myself surrounded by 'em one day durin' the wah when I was doin' picket duty, and the way they run me in was a caution, suh. They bein' six to one, I just let on that I was satisfied if they was."

"And what did they do to you?" I asked.

"They near killed me, suh, with seegyars, and mo' real food than I'd seen in six months," he said with a chuckle. "The' wasn't anything they had, from plug tobacker and seegyars up to a real meat dinner that I didn't git mo' 'n my faiah share of."

"And how long did they keep you?" I queried.

"Fo' as long as I was willin' to stay, suh," was his reply. "The minute they see I was beginnin' to feel oneasy they run me back to the line again, and turned me loose. Speakin' about Yanks," he went on, "we've got five of 'em buried in our own Confederate graveyard in the cemetery, suh; and I'm kind of afraid it won't be long befo' they's six of 'em. One of yo' old soldiers from up No'th come down here fo' his health last year; but he's gone down steadily, and I reckon it ain't for long that he'll be with us. When we heard he was an old soldier our Post sent him to the hospital, and he's dyin' there now. He seemed to feel so bad about the idee o' bein' buried in the Potter's Field that we voted to give him a grave with the rest of the boys, and when he goes he'll lie with soldiers, like he's allers wanted to do."

I could not find any words in the languages known to me, dead or alive, to express what I felt, and so I kept silent.

"He won't be forgotten, neither, after he gits there," the old fellow went on. "We have our Memorial Day, just as you have your Decoration Day, and every year we go up to the lot and decorate the graves of 'em all, Yank or Johnny, just the same. We put a little Confederate flag at the head of every grave that holds one of our own; and every one o' them Yanks has a little flag at the head of his grave too, only his is the flag he fought for, just as ours is the flag we fought for. It's a pretty sight, my friend," he added softly, "with them five little American flags flutterin' away among the sixty or seventy others."

Verily this Southern hospitality is no vain thing, no mere empty show, or ingratiating veneer to make a spurious article seem real. Personal interest may sometimes rest at the basis of a seeming courtesy. Selfishness may lie often at the bottom of a superficial graciousness of manner assumed for the moment to conceal that very selfishness; but the hospitality that leads a body of old soldiers to grant at their own cost, and to take care of with their own loving hands, a green resting place, a last sanctuary, for a former foe, that indeed is an unselfish, genuine kind of hospitality which, like the peace of God, passeth all understanding.

III

GETTING THE LEVEL

One of the more serious dangers confronting the platform speaker is the presumption that his audience will not prove sufficiently intelligent to grasp him when he is at what he thinks is his best. I use the word "presumption" advisedly; for it is sheer presumption and nothing else, and I may add that if my experience has taught me anything, it is that it does not pay to be so presuming. If there is trouble anywhere in "getting one's stuff over," as the saying is, the fault will be found in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred to be with the lecturer, and not with his audience.

My most earnest advice to those platform speakers who feel it necessary to "get down to the level" of an audience, instead of feeling an inward urge to climb up to it, is that they give up the platform altogether, and take up some other occupation where conscious superiority really counts; say that of head waiter in a New York restaurant, for instance, or possibly that of literary critic on the staff of a periodical, whose chief concern is pink socks, lavender neckties, and the mysteries of lingerie. In these occupations conscious superiority is an essential of success; but on the lecture platform the consciously superior person cannot in the very nature of things last very long: not in this country, anyhow; for, as I have studied the American people face to face for the past ten years in every State of the Union, I have learned that their capacity for pricking a bubble of pretense on sight is surpassed only by their high appreciation of a speaker who immediately gets into the atmosphere of the special occasion confronting him.

For my own part, I have come to believe that each occasion establishes its own "best," and that the chief duty confronting me is to measure up to the "best" demanded by that occasion if I can. For this reason one's lecture should be a moderately flexible affair, which can be so adjusted to each and every occasion that it fits an audience as nicely as a tailor-made garment. A lecture written out beforehand and committed to memory can never quite fulfil these requirements. It becomes not a lecture, but an essay; not platform work, but literary work; should be read, not heard; and in its delivery becomes not a sympathetic talk, man to man, but a mere recitation.