I thanked him for his consideration. "I'd like to buy this hotel," I added.
"Well, it's for sale," said he. "Like to run it yourself?"
"No," said I. "I thought it might be some fun to buy a Panama fan and blow it down."
"I was the sudden recipient of a blow on top of my head."
With which we parted forever. I have returned to the gentleman's bailiwick several times since; but never again have I entered the portals of that hostelry, for fear that by the careless dropping of my tooth-brush or a cake of soap I might cause the complete collapse of the structure, with the possible destruction of innocent lives; though if I were assured that in falling it would land only on that landlord's head I think I would willingly go out of my way to hire an aëroplane some night and drop a pebble upon its roof from a height of three or four feet. This is not so vindictive as it seems, either; for it would not hurt that landlord over-severely. You could drop a much heavier weight than that hotel upon any bit of solid ivory within reach without hurting the ivory unduly.
A less sordid, and indeed wholly inspiring, incident along similar lines occurred three years ago at Georgetown, Texas, when on a terrific night in February, which I shall never forget, I stood for a few minutes face to face with what might have proved an appalling tragedy. As I look back upon the incident now it seems to me to have been at once the most thrilling, and at the same time the most stimulating, moment of my life.
I had arrived at Georgetown early in the afternoon, and simultaneously with my coming—and, as some of my critics may intimate, possibly because of it—there arrived also one of those dreaded windstorms known in that section of the world as a norther. Perhaps the Texans are so used to these outbursts of Nature that they take them as all in the day's work; but to myself, unused to anything more boreally disturbing than an occasional nor'easter on the Maine Coast, it was extremely disturbing. I did not dare walk on any of the sidewalks, fearing that the loudly rattling signboards of commerce might be precipitated upon me. One of the best liked literary friends of my younger days had passed from intellectual brilliance of a most promising sort into permanent mental darkness through the falling upon his head of a swinging sign in New York, and I had come to regard such possibilities with dread.
The Muse and I consequently spent the afternoon indoors in a quivering but substantial and well kept hotel, whose courteous landladies neither the Muse nor I will ever fail to remember with affectionate esteem. As I rode in an omnibus to the lecture hall that night, I rejoiced in the heaviness of the vehicle, which otherwise must have been overturned by the heavy blasts to which it was subjected.
When I reached the college I found the auditorium on the third floor of the main building in almost total darkness, the only light coming from an oil lamp standing on a piano at one end of the stage. The wind had put the electric lighting apparatus temporarily out of commission; but students were at work upon it, and I was assured that all would be well if I would defer my lecture for a little while. To this of course I consented; for, however pleasing it may be to talk to one person in the dark, there is no pleasure in addressing a multitude of people into whose eyes one is unable to look.