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

by John Kendrick Bangs

I resolved to let him go his own gait, and comforted him by telling him he could say whatever he pleased, and that I would "stand for it."

And I must confess he acquitted himself nobly. In his hands I became one of the Princes of Letters, the titles of whose many books were too well known to need any enumeration of them there, and as for my name—why, it would be an impertinence for him even to mention it, "because, my friends," said he, "I am perfectly well aware that that name is as familiar to you as it is to me."

Another good gentleman in the South, summoned to do duty as chairman at the last moment, sought no aid either from myself or from "Who's Who," trusting, like the good Christian he was, utterly to Holy Writ. He began most impressively with selections from the Book of Genesis. "In the beginning God created the earth," said he, and then he ran lightly over the sequences of created things until he had ushered the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fishes of the sea on to the stage, and thence with an easy jump he came to myself.

"And then, my friends," he said, with an impressive pause, "the Creator felt that He should create something to have dominion over all these things that He knew were good—a creature of heart, a creature of soul, a creature of in-till-ect, and so He made man. My friends, it is such a one that we have with us to-night who will speak to you upon his own subject as only he can do. It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the speaker of the evening, who is too well known to you all to need any further eulogy on my part."

The good gentleman then retired to a proscenium box at the right of the stage, where he at once proceeded to fall asleep, and snored so lustily that everybody in the house was delighted, including myself—although, to tell the truth, I envied him his nap, for I was immortally tired.

One of the dearest of my chairmen was a fine old gentleman in West Virginia, to meet and know whom was truly an inspiration. He was a profound scholar, and had enjoyed the rare privilege in a long and useful life of knowing intimately some of the demigods of American literature. His reminiscences of Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Longfellow, and Hawthorne, and others of our most brilliant literary epoch, were a delight to listen to, and I was sorry when the time came for us to go out upon the platform. It would have been a greater treat for that audience to listen to him than to me, and I heartily wished we might exchange places for the moment. Like a great many others of my chairmen, this gentleman experienced some difficulty in getting the title of my lecture, "Salubrities I Have Met," straight in his mind. More than once during our little chat together he would pause and say:

"What is the title of your talk again? It has slipped my mind."

"Sal-u-bri-ties I Have Met," I would say.

"Tell me again—is it Salubrities or Celebrities?" he would ask.

"Salubrities," I would reply. And then I would spell it out for him, "S-A-L-U-B-R-I-T-I-E-S, Salubrities. Not in any case Celebrities, or you will spoil my opening."