After fifteen minutes of waiting the electric lights suddenly gleamed forth, and I was gratified to see before me an audience of substantial size, made up for the most part of students, with a fair proportion of the townspeople scattered about here and there. The college was a coeducational institution, and the boys and girls were in fair measure paired off in congenial fashion.
With the restoration of the light the president of the college stepped to the front of the platform and presented me to the audience, after which I rose and approached the footlights to begin. But never a word was I permitted to speak; for as I started in the howling wind outside seemed to re-double in its fury and intensity. There came a sudden loud grinding and ripping sound, and a huge part of the roof was lifted bodily upward, and then dropped back with a crash. One heavy beam fell squarely in one of the aisles without injury to any one, though two feet off on either side it would have killed the occupants of the aisle seats, and from all parts of the great room big chunks of plaster and lathing fell in upon the audience.
There was present every element of a tragedy of fearful proportions; but from that assembled multitude of young people came not even a scream, and on every side I saw stalwart young Texans of To-day and To-morrow rise up from their seats, and lean over the girls sitting crouched in the chairs beside them, taking all the weight and woe of that falling ceiling upon their own manly shoulders! It was a magnificent exhibition of readiness of resource, self-control, and unselfish chivalry. Almost instantly with the first shock the president of the college, with a calmness at which I still marvel, rose from the chair behind me and confronted the gathering.
"Now, my young friends," said he, speaking with amazing rapidity, each word enunciated as incisively as though spoken with lips of chilled steel, "remember—this is one of the emergencies you are supposed to be trained to meet. There is no telling how serious this situation is; but let us have no panic. Rise and walk out quietly, and without too much haste."
The youngsters rose and marched out of the hall in a fashion that would have delighted the soul of a martinet among drill masters, down three flights of stairs to the campus, silently, and without the slightest outward manifestation of the fear that must have been in the hearts of every one of them.
There had appeared in one of America's best magazines only a few months previously a scathing arraignment of the young American of To-day, in which the girls were indicted as being frivolous, lacking in self-control, and full of selfishness, and the American boy was held up to public scorn as knowing naught of respect for authority, and wholly deficient in the quality of chivalry for which the youth of other times had been noted. I wished then and I wish now that the good lady who spoke so witheringly on that subject could have witnessed what I looked upon that night in Texas. I think she would have modified her utterance at least, if indeed she would not have changed her point of view completely. She would have made her assertions less sweeping, I am convinced; for she would have learned from that episode, as I have learned from my contact with the youth of this land, not only in Texas but elsewhere, that save for a superficial element, fortunately not very large, the American youth of to-day, boy or girl, is in the main a strong-fibered, self-controlled, unselfish, chivalrous product which would be a credit to any nation, anywhere, at any time, past, present, or future.
In conclusion let me say that when I returned to Georgetown the following season to deliver my undelivered lecture I was introduced to practically the same audience as "the man who brought down the house without even opening his mouth."
Which shows that not only are youthful chivalry and self-control not dead in Texas, but that American humor likewise is in flourishing condition in that truly imperial State of our Union.