Still, I hoped that the uproar would be brief, indeed, I had been told of ten minutes as the limit. Alas, no! Though their faces were crimson and streamed with sweat, they felt no fatigue, and they clashed, blared and banged on until a quarter to nine, forty-five minutes. There was a hubbub of Welsh congratulations, after which I bowed to the leader of the band (his instrument was the bombardon), and said without emphasis, “Thank you so much.” Then I went before the sheet, there being no chairman.

The hall was packed, 600 I should think being present, and of them at least 590 were miners. Not a sound was heard, every face was filled with blank amazement. Not being used to such a reception, I was a bit daunted, but plunged in and talked my best for an hour and a quarter. Still not a sound nor a movement, until one of the committee went before the screen and said something in Welsh, upon which the hall emptied, noisily, it is true, but in most orderly fashion. On joining the committee I expressed a fear that I had not pleased my audience, but my host of teatime hastened to assure me that my efforts were beyond praise.

“Only,” he said, “you must remember that very few of the chaps understand English!”

And then, indeed, I was filled with admiration for their good behaviour. To sit and listen to unintelligible explanations of pictures representing something they had never even dreamed of before,—sit for seventy-five minutes and make no protest, then go out in such orderly fashion,—well, it spoke volumes for their characters in the direction of self-restraint.

“Now, sir,” broke in my kind guardian again, “if you will come along with us to Blaengwynfi, we have found you a hotel there. This village has no public accommodation at all.”

Of course I signified my delighted acquiescence. What else could I do? But I hoped it was not very far, and I was at once assured that it was less than a mile. So we strolled, about eight of us, my bag being carried by one of the party, and soon arrived at the hotel, where I was solicitously attended to in the matter of food, and given quite a decent room. My meal over, I was invited to join my committee, who were evidently out for the evening. Well, what a gay crowd it was, to be sure. They sang and they drank and they smoked—the eleven o’clock rule having been suspended for their benefit apparently, until at about midnight I begged off, and retired to my bedroom. But as it was next to the room in which were the revellers, it was long before I got to sleep, though I have no idea when the merry party broke up.

Next day, however, I found that my bill had been paid, and that everybody was delighted with my behaviour and with the evening generally. Also I found a good train from a station almost opposite to the hotel, and passed away from the district never to visit it again, but to bear it in memory all my life.

CHAPTER IX
HOSPITALITY—continued

While I am upon this subject of hospitality, I may as well say what I really believe, that as far as my experience goes—and I am fully aware that it does not go very far—I give the palm for knowing how to be really hospitable to my own countrymen, with a slight reservation in favour of the Scotch. But first of all it is necessary to define exactly what I mean by hospitality. Let me say that I am considering it entirely from the point of view of the lecturer. Of the man or woman who has made a long journey, involving very likely all sorts of trying inconveniences, in order to fulfil an engagement to entertain some hundreds of people for a couple of hours or less, and whose first duty is to those people, his employers for the time being.

When a local magnate invites a lecturer to accept his hospitality during the lecturer’s stay, he should remember what the lecturer’s business is, and that he has very likely to deliver another lecture the following night at some town a long distance away. Most hosts and hostesses do remember this, and act accordingly; some few, a very few, act as if the lecturer simply came to entertain them and their guests, and had no other business in life. They are not hospitable in the present sense, if, indeed, they are in any other. No one has a right to ask a lecturer to stay with him unless he has the means to make such a public servant comfortable; no one should act as if the lecturer would be homeless for the night if they do not give him a shelter, unless indeed there be no place of public entertainment in the town, or means of getting out of the town after the lecture.