But, after all that can and must be said against it, human nature is kind. Deceit, love of gain, suspicion and even violence are often mere means of defense. Get through the joints of any one’s every-day armor and reach the heart and the same sweet response of sympathy rings out, the world over, in tones as mellow as old Trinity’s chimes on New Year’s eve, and self-disguised people become genuine. For illustration, let an old man or old woman enter a streetcar crowded with men whose faces are hard with business cares; why every seat is at their disposal; there is the genuineness of the people.
Yet if we were all and always genuine there would be no human nature to study, for “Truth is simple, requiring neither study nor art.”
XXIII
SUNNY STAGE PEOPLE
“Joe” Jefferson.—I Take His Life.—His Absent-Mindedness.—Jefferson and General Grant.—Nat Goodwin and How He Helped Me Make Trouble.—Our Bicycling Mishap.—Goodwin Pours Oil on Troubled Dramatic Waters Abroad.—George Leslie.—Wilton Lackaye.—Burr McIntosh.—Miss Ada Rehan.
Every class of people on earth contains a pleasing number of cheery folk, but far the greatest proportion is found in the theatrical profession. Get together, if you can, all the companionable, hospitable souls of all other classes and the stage people by themselves can make almost as good a showing. When talking of them I never know where to begin or how to stop, for they have loaded me with kindnesses, and began it when I was on the extreme outer edge of a profession which they regarded as a mere side show to their own.
Years ago when I was on the lecture platform I used to have some cloudy hours, in spite of my efforts to be sunny, for, unlike theatrical people, lecturers are usually their own only traveling companions, the railway runs are long, the engagements are what the dramatic agents call “one night stands,” so the stops are so short that the lecturer has no chance to adapt his digestive apparatus to the surprises that unknown chefs of unknown hotels delight in springing upon him. Years ago—as I said a moment ago, I was thinking of all these miseries, as I left a train at Utica on a snowy, stormy afternoon of the Christmas holidays, when I specially longed to be with some friends in New York. I had four blank hours before me, for I was not to appear on the platform until evening, and it was one of the days when I was too tired to study or read and too shaken up to sleep. Suddenly a negro porter in drawing-room car uniform accosted me with:
“Mr. Wilder, Mr. Jefferson would like to see you.”
He pointed to the right, and there in the window of a parlor car, sidetracked for the day only, stood “Joe” Jefferson. When I got into the car and looked about me I saw the great “all-star” cast of “The Rivals”—dear Mme. Ponisi, Mr. John Drew, Viola Allen, W. J. Florence, Otis Skinner, Frederic Paulding, Frank Bangs, George Dunham, Elsie C. Lombard (now Mrs. John T. Brush), and Mr. Jefferson’s sons, Tom, Charlie, Joe, Jr., and Willie.
These good people were all seated around the dining-table of the special car that I entered, and the cordial greeting I received, combined with the contrast with “all-outdoors” and all else that had been depressing me, made me the happiest man on the continent. I remained there two or three hours, partly because, when manners suggested I should go, I was forcibly detained. I told stories whenever I could, but I was more entertained than entertaining. The time came when I was really obliged to go and I said: