From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book. Bangs John Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ between two caged lions to the excited, clamorous interest of all the other beasts imprisoned there, have I heard such a variegated din as greeted me on that occasion, and I realized sympathetically for the first time perhaps the true significance of Theodore Roosevelt's "dee-lighted" smile when as President of the United States he took his annual stroll across the football field at a Harvard and Yale game, and listened to the "voice of the people." So contagious was it that I had all I could do to keep from joining in myself and only the necessity of saving my voice for my lecture prevented me from being myself heard above the din.

      That noise was the keynote of the evening. I think I may say with due modesty that my lecture had one or two touches of humor in it – three or four, in fact – varying in character from the "scarcely perceptible subtle" to the "inevitably obvious," with other sorts sandwiched in between, and none of them was lost; although I was not permitted to finish many of my sentences. The audience seemed to get in ahead of me every time.

      The situation reminded me in a way of the grandstand finish of a poor paralyzed old darky named Joe, of whom I was once told by a Pullman car porter on my way through Montana. Joe had been a famous sportsman in his day; but now misfortune had overtaken him, and he lay bedridden, wholly unable to use his legs, and awaiting the end. Several of his friends, taking pity on him, resolved to give him the joy of one last glorious coon hunt.

      They put him on a stretcher and carried him out into the country where that luscious creature "abounded and abutted." The dogs were let loose, and finally showed unusual activity at the base of a tall tree; but, to the dismay of all, the game turned out to be no coon, but a particularly hungry, sore-headed, old she-bear.

      As the roaring beast clambered down after her tormentors, Joe's litter bearers, terrified, dropped their burden and made off down the road in coward flight, and it was not until an hour after they had reached home in safety that they thought of the possible fate of their paralytic friend. Conscience-stricken, they resolved to go to Joe's home and break the news of their cowardly behavior to the presumable widow. The good woman met them at the door.

      "What yo' niggahs want round here dis time o' night?" she demanded.

      "We come to tell yo' 'bout Joe, Mis' Johnsing," said the embarrassed spokesman.

      "Yo' kain't tell me nothin' 'bout Joe what Ah don' know a'ready," replied Mrs. Johnson coldly.

      "Yas'm; but yo' don' know whar Joe is, Mis' Johnsing," persisted the speaker. "We done – "

      "Yas, Ah do know whar Joe is," retorted the lady. "He's upstairs in he bed."

      "In he bed?" echoed the astonished visitors.

      "Yass," said Mrs. Johnson. "Joe come in ovah an hour ago hollerin' like a bullgine fohty yahds ahead o' de dawgs."

      I think I may say without exaggeration that that Harvard Union audience even beat Joe's record; for they were twice "fohty yahds ahead o' de dawgs" all the way through, and as for "hollerin'" they were not so much like one single "bullgine" as like a whole roundhouse full of them, aided and abetted by a couple of boiler factories in full blast.

      And then, only sixteen hours later, came the address at the Woman's Club ten miles out of Boston; the same lecture, in a quiet drawing room, before forty ladies who embroidered and crocheted while I talked, and here the point that had raised the roof and shaken the foundations of the Harvard Union was greeted by the tapping of a thimble against the wooden frame of an embroidery hoop!

      I cannot say which of the two varieties of approval pleased me more; but I will say that no idea of talking "up" or "down" to my audience occurred to me on either occasion: it was rather a matter of "getting across."

      One never can tell save by the "feel" of things in the hour of action how they are going to turn out. Only this last season I found myself, through a misapprehension of the character of my engagement, standing before an audience in a New England amusement park on a Sunday afternoon. I will say frankly that if I had known that I was to be a sideshow to a Ferris Wheel and a scenic railway, with pink lemonade on tap everywhere, and "all for ten cents," I should not have accepted the engagement. While I have admired them at a respectful distance, I have never envied the wild man of Borneo or the bearded lady their opportunities for personal enrichment; but on this occasion in some way or other I had gained an impression that my date had been arranged by, and was to be under the auspices of, a combination of church interests, designed to offset the evils of Sunday afternoon idleness in a manufacturing town. It was a misunderstanding, however, that I now rejoice in; for, amusement park or not, sideshow or main ring, I found it an enjoyable and educating experience.

      I approached it in fear and trembling, especially when I noticed as I was awaiting my "turn" the vast quantities of chewing gum that were being sold to my audience by the inevitable boy with the basket. There is always something disconcerting to a public speaker in the constant, simultaneous, and automatic movement of other jaws than his own, and in the face of a collective jaw, made up of sixteen hundred lowers that chewed as one, I feared that mine, singly and alone, would find the odds against it overpowering. Strange to say, however, my real fear on this occasion was not on the score of my audience, but whether I should be able to acquit myself creditably before them. I have fondly hoped that my little talk contained a message, and as I observed these seekers after pleasure slowly gathering, and taking their places on tiers of pine benches under the kindly shade of a row of noble pines, it occurred to me that if there was any fruitful soil for my message anywhere it was in the hearts of just such people as sat before me – toilers, the humbler folk, the men and women whose lives had been too busy with bread-and-butter problems for the acquirement of culture, and whose sole opportunity for amusement, uplifting or otherwise, came on these very Sunday afternoons.

      There were men and boys there who under other conditions might have been idling on street corners. I counted three Chinese, several Japanese, and a half-dozen Negroes in my audience. A dozen women had their babies with them, and many a small kiddie, too young to chew gum without exposure to the peril of swallowing it, nibbled and absorbed ginger cookies as I watched them. The question became not were they good enough for me, but could I convince them that I was good enough for them. It was not a question of "getting down to their level," but of my own ability to climb up to the level of my opportunity. For the time being whatever superiority there was was altogether on their side, and the point was how I could prove myself the real thing, and not the artificial; how I could find the common denominator which would enable us to get on "like a house afire" together.

      As I was speaking the solution came – and a mighty simple one it turned out to be; for it lay wholly in the simplest possible use of the English language. "Cut out the big words," I said to myself. "Cut out all unfamiliar terms. Get right down to good old Anglo-Saxon. Drop such jawbreakers as differentiate, terminology, intimations, implications, and psychological." My chief hope became that I might once more at least measure up to that condition which was clearly set forth a great many years ago by a Western chairman, at a time when I was too much of a novice to do my work even passably well, who said to me as we walked to my hotel after the lecture was over:

      "We don't care so much for your lecture, Mr. Bangs; but we like you, and we're going to have you back."

      Whether or not my plan was successful I shall not attempt to say; but I may be pardoned, perhaps, for recording here one of the most delightful compliments I have ever had, paid me by a threadbare workingman who came up behind me as I was leaving the park that afternoon, and put his arm through mine as he spoke.

      "Are you goin' to speak here to-night, Brother?" he said.

      "No," said I. "I am hurrying off to Boston on the five o'clock train."

      "Well, I'm sorry," said he. "I wanted to come out and hear ye again."

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