Kitabı oku: «From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book», sayfa 8

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HUMORS OF THE ROAD

It appears to be the habit of every age to lament its own dearth of humor, and in our own time we have not been exempt from the charge that we have no humorists. It is my own candid opinion in respect to this matter that we are confronted by a paradox in that we have so many humorists that in effect we seem to have none; so much of humor that in the very surfeit of it its brilliance does not appear; in short, that because of the trees we cannot see the wood.

A period that has produced a Dooley, and an Ade, and an Irvin Cobb, and a Bert Leston Taylor, is surely not poor in humorous possessions of a scintillating character, whether we demand that our humor shall be a product of pure fun or of profoundly serious thinking. J. Montgomery Flagg in picture and in text is as much a master of effervescent foolery as ever was either John Phœnix or Artemas Ward; and in the humor that is designed to interpret life itself I find an endless store of it in the works of Wallace Irwin, of Montague Glass, of Miss Edna Ferber, and of Mrs. Alice Regan Rice; the last two, by the way, forming a complete refutation of the preposterous notion that women are devoid of the sentiment that cheers but does not inebriate. And as for the wits, if Oliver Herford were as lonely among wits as he is unique, I should still feel that we were rich beyond measure in that form of humor which is for the most part intellectual, of the mind rather than of the emotions.

But even if the charge were true – which of course it is not – that we no longer have any purveyors of humor of the first class upon whom we may rely for a service as regular as is our supply of milk, butter, and eggs, we could still lay the flattering unction to our souls that American life is full of humor. If any one doubts the fact, let him throw himself headlong into the Lyceum Seas and find out from personal contact. To me it seems to crop up everywhere, and whether I travel north, south, east, or west I find it in great abundance – humor conscious, and humor unconscious; humor of the mind, and humor of the heart, or pathos; humor of situation, and the humor involving a mere play upon words; humor in all its infinitely varied qualities, and of a character most appealing. Writing a short while ago of an alleged similar condition in another field of letters, that of lyric poetry, I permitted myself the following rather sentimental reflections:

 
No singers great are here to-day?
Perhaps! Let the indictment stand.
I hear no strong voice on the way,
No lilt from some immortal hand;
And yet as on the silver mere
I float, and towering hillsides scan,
Deep in my heart I seem to hear
Again the merry pipes of Pan.
 
 
No lyrics worthy of the name
Are sung to-day by living men?
Perhaps! Yet naught is there of shame
That we have not old Herrick's pen,
For as I wander 'neath these skies
As fairly blue as skies can be
And gaze into two special eyes,
All life a lyric is to me.
 

With equal truth and sincerity I could say much the same in respect to humor, and indeed I might properly even go further. I could not perhaps say that all Americans, or even many Americans, are lyrists; but I should not fall far short of the mark were I to say that most Americans are humorists. In my travels I come across occasional "nonconductors," as a clever woman of my acquaintance once called a certain social light who was as impervious to wit as is the rhinoceros to the sting of a gnat; but they are few and far between. For the most part I have found natural born humorists on nearly every bush.

In a previous chapter I have confessed to some disappointment in the quality of the humor of the negro as I have encountered it in Southern climes; but there have been, nevertheless, delightful rifts in that cloud. I recall an aged son of Ethiopia who called for me one wintry morning at four o'clock to drive me from my hotel at Greenville, South Carolina, to the railway station. He was a ragged old fellow, and with his snowy, wool-covered head composed a study in black and white worthy of the brush of any of our best limners of character. He was as communicative as he was ragged, and confided to me at the very beginning of our acquaintance that he had moved away from Charleston to become a resident of Greenville because down in Charleston he couldn't eat "pohk" (which I took to be pork) without having to take to his bed; while in the more salubrious climate of Greenville he could "swaller a whole ham at a settin', an' nebber hyear a woid from dat old ham forebber after." His name, he told me, was "mos' gin'rally George"; but he "warn't biggetty" about what people called him, since he was willin' to come "ef dey on'y jes' whistled."

The early morning hours were cold and dreary, and I found my fur-lined horse blanket, as I have come to call my faithful winter overcoat, none too warm. Noting George's rather inadequate provision against the chill winds, I advised him to wrap his dilapidated old lap-robe about his shoulders.

"Ah'm all right, Boss," he replied. "Don't yo' worry erbout me. Dis yere old obercoat o' mine ain't much to look at; but hit's on de job jes' de same." He gave a most amusing chuckle. "Yo'd ought to hyear mah fambly takin' on erbout dis yere old obercoat!" he said. "Dey's kind o' proudy folks, an' dey don't like it. Dey says hit don't look neat; but Ah tell 'um Ah'm a gwine t' wear hit jes' de same, neat er no neat —de undahtakah, he mek yo' look neat!"

From which I deduced that George was not only a humorist, but in a fair way to qualify as a philosopher as well.

Two days later I happened to be at Atlanta, Georgia, over Lincoln's Birthday, and it pleased me beyond measure to find printed on the first page of one of the prominent daily newspapers of that beautiful city a three-column cut of Abraham Lincoln, with a suitable tribute in verse from one of America's leading syndicate poets. I had myself for reasons of taste, and in order to give no offense to my kindly hosts throughout the Southland, omitted from my discourse passing references to certain great figures of the Civil War; but on seeing this very notable recognition by his old-time adversaries of the great virtues of our martyred President, I hesitated no longer in respect to these references, and from that time on reverted to the original form of my talk.

After eating my breakfast on this morning of the eleventh I dallied for awhile in the office of the massive Georgian Terrace Hotel, smoking my cigar, and glancing over the news in the paper. As I was about to toss the paper aside a fine old type of your Southern gentleman seated himself on the divan alongside of me, and in the usual courteous fashion of the country gave me a morning salutation. I responded in kind, and then tapping my paper observed:

"That is a fine picture of Lincoln."

"Yes, suh, a verruh fine picture, suh," he replied. "I never had the honah of seein' Mistuh Lincoln, suh; but from all I hyear, suh, he must have resembled that picture pretty close, suh."

"It is a delight to me to find it in one of your Southern newspapers," said I, "especially in one so influential in the South as this."

"Yes, suh," he answered. "It shows that the South is not slow to recognize genius, suh, wherever it is found, suh. But," he added, "there is no occasion for surprise, suh. We have always appreciated Mr. Lincoln's greatness down hyear, and we have admiahed him, suh; though we have had reason to believe that durin' the late onpleasantness, suh, he was consid'rable of a No'thern sympathizah, suh."

Conspicuous in my memory for both his conscious wit and his unconscious humor is a strapping negro I encountered at a junction down in Alabama last winter. I was marooned there for five weary hours, receiving at the hands of its natives as high a courtesy and as fearful food as I have ever yet had presented to me. The colored porter at the hotel had a face as black as the ace of spades, and as childlike and bland as it was black. He seemed to take a tremendous interest in me, especially in my fur overcoat, which he appeared to think must "ha cost as much as eight dollahs," and he plied me with questions as we stood on the railway platform waiting for my train into Birmingham for a full hour that nearly drove me to despair. I have not space for that illuminating interchange of ideas in all its verbal fullness; but part of it ran in this wise:

"Whar yo' come from?"

"Maine," said I.

"Maine?" he repeated. "What's Maine?"

"Why, Maine – Maine is a State," said I. "And it's a nice one too," I added.

"Oh, yaas," he said. "Hit's ober yander, ain't it?" he continued, with a wave of his hand sweeping enough to take in the whole universe.

"Yes," said I, "away over yonder. It's down East."

"Got any children?" he queried.

"Yes," said I, "I've got two sons in Detroit, and – "

"Dee-troit, eh?" he interrupted. "Yaas, suh, Ah've heerd o' Dee-troit. Dee-troit's a nice State too – a mighty nice State – a nice State to have two sons at, Ah reckon. So yo' was born in Dee-troit, was yuh?"

"No," I replied, "I wasn't born at Detroit; I was born at Yonkers – "

"O-o-oh! So yo' was born at Yonkers, was yuh? Yaas, suh – Yonkers! Ah don't know much erbout Yonkers; but Ah guess Yonkers is a nice State too, ain't it?"

"Well," I laughed, "yes – Yonkers is a pretty nice State too – what you might call a Comatose State; but – "

"Yaas, suh – Ah've heern tell dat Yonkers was one o' dem cummytoe States, an' Ah guess dat's a pretty good kind ob a State to be bohn in. What yo' sellin'?" This with a hasty glance at my suitcase.

"Brains," said I.

"Lawsy me! Sellin' brains, eh?" said he. "Waal, suh, Ah'm sorry. Yo' look so kind o' set up Ah thought yo' was a-sellin' seegyars. Yaas, suh – Ah'd hoped yo' was." He gazed wistfully along the shining rails. "Dem seegyar drummahs is mighty free wid deir samples, suh," he continued, "and Ah been a hopin' yo'd be able to spar' me a han'ful like de res' ob 'em does. But ef yo're dealin' in brains, hit ain't likely yo' got enough to gib any away."

I may add that his disappointment was short-lived; for before we parted I took him across to the general store that fronted on the railroad track, and by the judicious expenditure of a quarter bought him a supply of his favorite brand large enough to last him a week. A single one of them would have done for me forever.

Repartee has always been a characteristic gift of the American people, due no doubt to a political system that turns almost every community into a debating society at least once a year, and sometimes oftener. Readiness of verbal retort has thereby become an inheritance that grows richer in the squandering of it. It has been a quality so conspicuous that it has led a great many people, justly or otherwise, to assert that there are more really good jokes to be found in the course of a year in the columns of the "Congressional Record" than in the cleverest of the world's comic papers. However this may be, I know that one of the zestful things about a lecturer's life is the jestful thing that lurks at his side almost everywhere he turns.

I have had many proofs of this in my own wanderings; some direct, and some at long range. An amusing instance of the long-range retort occurred some years ago when I found in my mail one morning a letter from a gentleman living in Wyoming, an entire stranger to me, who said that he had heard from a friend that I wrote after-dinner speeches for others as part of my professional work.

Somehow or other [he continued] I have managed to get a reputation as a wit which I don't deserve; but I've got to live up to it, or go under. Now it has occurred to me that since you are in the business of writing after-dinner speeches for others you might turn out three crackajacks for me.

So, without beating about the bush any longer, I want to ask you what you would charge me for three ripsnorters lasting about a half an hour each, speaking at the rate of a hundred and fifty words a minute, on the subjects of "Our Glorious Commonwealth," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and "The Ladies." If your terms are not too high, I shall be glad to give you the order.

I cannot say whether my sensations upon reading this delightful communication were more of amazement or of amusement, but after due deliberation I decided to answer the letter in a facetious spirit.

I have your esteemed favor of Thursday last [I wrote], and beg to say that my regular charge for a single speech such as you require, suitable for delivery before a mixed gathering of ladies and gentlemen, has invariably been $1,000 in the past; but since your proposition is more or less on a wholesale basis, and business is slack, I will make an exception in your case and give you the special terms of $750 per, F. O. B. I must insist, however, that you regard these terms as strictly confidential; for it might involve me in serious complications if Mr. Choate, and Gen. Horace Porter, and Senator Blank were to learn that I was cutting rates. They have been among my best customers for many years, and for their own sakes, as well as for my own, I do not wish to lose their trade.

This letter, which I felt tolerably sure would end the matter once and for all, was mailed, and within a week brought me the following telegraphic response:

If you write Senator Blank's speeches, I don't want one from you at any price.

It added not a little to the poignancy of this retort that the telegram was sent "collect."

Another example of ready American facetiousness cheered a dull day for me last year in Tennessee. I was booked to lecture before a charming collegiate community at Blue Mountain, Mississippi, and to get there from Memphis was required to make a railway connection at a curious little town called Middleton. Middleton was an amazing concoction of piccaninnies, waste paper, inactive whites, and germ suggestion. Mr. Goldberg, the cartoonist, would probably have referred to it if he had been along with me as the town that put the Junk in Junction, and upon its dilapidated railway platform I was compelled to wait for six mortal hours, hungry and thirsty, but fearing to assuage the one or quench the other for fear of internal complications beyond the reach of medical science. If I had never believed in the hookworm before, I became an abject coward in the fear of it then.

Middleton's chief excuse for being appeared to be that it was the terminus of a featherbed affair called the New Orleans, Mobile & Chicago Railway, possibly in ironic reference to the fact that as far as I could learn it did not touch any point within two hundred miles of any one of those cities. I imagine that the mileage of the New Orleans, Mobile & Chicago Railway, or at least that particular section of it, was somewhere between thirty-seven and thirty-eight miles linear measure; though in the matter of jolting, careening, sliding, skidding, and galumphing along generally, its emotional mileage was incalculable, and the effect of a ride from Middleton at one end to New Albany at the other on the liver surpassed that of all the great transcontinental systems rolled into one.

From what I could gather in casual conversation with such bureaus of information as were available at Middleton its trains ran anywhere from twenty-seven hours to a year and six months late. I will say on behalf of its management, however, that after trying it once I concluded that it was a miracle it ran at all. Three or four times in the course of my waiting I decided to give up the quest of Blue Mountain altogether and to return to Memphis; but hope has always sprung eternal in my breast, and each resolution to quit the game was superseded by some kind of optimistic spiritual reassurance that held me true to my obligations.

Ultimately my optimism was justified, and a panting little combination of whirring wheels and iron rust wheezed into view, dragging a passenger car of I should say the vintage of 1852, and a shamefully big and modern freight car after it. A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Locomotives would have had everybody connected with the institution indicted then and there, and I was again strongly inclined to give up my effort to get through. It seemed the very height of inhumanity to ask that poor little engine to carry my added weight. I should have much preferred to lift it tenderly in my arms from the track, and put it into the freight car, and pull the train to Blue Mountain myself; at any rate, that seemed the most reasonable and the only really kind thing to do at the moment.

Nevertheless I boarded the train, having first invested fifty cents in twenty-fours' worth of postal card accident insurance at the ticket office window and mailed it to my executors. In a couple of hours we were sliding and bumping down grade through an oozy morass over tracks ballasted with something having the consistency of oatmeal mush liberally diluted with skim milk. We slid over the first half-mile in about fifteen seconds, thanks to the weight of that shameless freight car at the rear, which pushed the rest of us along at a terrific rate of speed; but things were averaged up when we came to an upgrade, which, on a rough estimate, I should say we accomplished at the rate of about a mile a week. After awhile the conductor appeared – a nice, genial, kindly soul, who inspired me with a confidence I had not yet managed to acquire in the road itself. He was so smiling and serenely unaffected by what loomed dark as dangers to me that I was soon feeling rather ashamed of myself for being so full of coward fears, and it was not long before in my mind I was singing those beautiful lines of Browning:

 
The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his heaven —
All's right with the world!
 

And as I was humming this comforting assurance to myself there broke upon the silence of the car the following colloquy:

"Howdy, Sam!" this from a fellow traveler sprawled comfortably in the seat just back of me.

"Howdy, Jim!" this from the smiling conductor.

"How long you been with this hyere road, Sam?" asked the fellow traveler.

"Seven years last March, Jim," replied the conductor.

"My Gord, Sam!" cried the fellow traveler, sitting up. "This must be your second trip!"

As for subtle humor of a rather sly sort, perhaps the best example I know of was a little jest perpetrated at the expense of one to whom I shall refer as my Only Muse, who, I rejoice to say, accompanies me upon most of my trips. She was with me once in Iowa when we were stranded at an interesting little railway crossing for several hours. The place consisted wholly of some stock-yards, a general store, and a small wooden cot which passed for a hotel, in which we found every comfort that courtesy could provide, even if some of the rather material necessities of life were lacking.

We took dinner at the hotel. Seated opposite us at table were two farmers, one a handsome middle-aged man, and the other a man wizened and gray, with a weather-beaten face, and a kindly eye; seventy years old, I imagine, but still as active and as interested in life as a boy, as all Iowans, irrespective of foolish years, seem to be. One or two little courtesies of the table started an acquaintance, and naturally enough I was asked my business in the State.

"Oh, I am out here lecturing," I said. "Well, we're farmers," said the old man.

Now the Only Muse takes a great interest in farming. She raises herself most of the vegetables we consume at home, and one of my ambitions has always been to set her up as the presiding Deity over a real farm some day when the lure of the platform no longer operates to drag me off into distant scenes. She had taken a course of lectures on farming at Columbia University, and was enthusiastically full of the subject at the time. Wherefore it happened that when my vis-à-vis announced that he was a farmer it was the best kind of opening for the conversational powers of the Only Muse – which to say the least are generally adequate – and she made the most of it. She talked of apples, corn, cows, and bees. She dilated eloquently upon the value of persistent "cultivation," and as I sat listening admiringly to her evidently masterful handling of her varied subjects I suddenly became conscious of the old man's eye twinkling across the table at me, and then, as the Only Muse paused to catch her breath for further disquisition, he leaned forward, and with seemingly innocent curiosity asked:

"Which one o' ye does the lecturin'?"

I trust that the outburst of merriment that greeted his query conveyed to his mind with perfect clarity the fact that there are no professional jealousies in my household.

At any rate this, with the wonderfully witty response of a distinguished railway president to certain reflections I had made in an after-dinner speech on his road, appeals to me as one of the most delicately subtle bits of wit I have encountered anywhere in real life – which life on the road undoubtedly is.

That the reader may judge for himself if the railway president was wittier than the Iowa farmer or not, I will close this chapter with a short narration of that incident.

The gentleman in question was Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore & Ohio, who on an occasion in New York listened courteously to some facetious observations I had to make on the subject of the wonders of the B. & O., and two days later heaped coals of fire upon my head by sending me by mail a pass over his railroad. I was of course delighted; but before using it decided to read carefully the "conditions and limitations named on the reverse side," under which it was issued. I turned the treasure over and read the following:

This pass will be accepted for transportation WHEN ACCOMPANIED BY CERTIFICATE of Company's Agent, attested by office-stamp, that the bearer has presented evidence of being HOPELESSLY INDIGENT, DESTITUTE, AND HOMELESS, or an INMATE OF A CHARITABLE OR ELEEMOSYNARY INSTITUTION, a SOLDIER or SAILOR about to enter either a NATIONAL HOME or "A HOUSE BOAT ON THE STYX," or otherwise qualified as entitled to free transportation under Federal or State Laws.

I do not remember whether or not I ever thanked Mr. Willard for this courtesy; but if I did not I do so now, and beg to assure him that I would not exchange that little document to-day for a controlling interest in his road. I am not much of a business man, but I have a keen sense of relative values.