“Brown stumbled on a business chance that made him a millionaire.”
“Well, there’s nothing like luck”—and they go on sitting still waiting for it, and can’t imagine why it never comes their way. I once chanced to mention Chauncey Depew’s name in the hearing of a crowd of this kind, and a voice replied:
“There’s a lucky man for you! Why, whenever he hears of anything, it is just his luck to have a story that goes to the spot as quick as a bullet from a gun.”
This sort of “luck,” like the other instances referred to, is the inevitable outcome of the man and his ways. There are jokes for every situation, as there are keys for every lock; but the man who lets a good joke go in one ear and out of the other is like him who puts his keys into a pocket with a hole in it, and then grumbles that he can’t unlock his doors. Jokes are like dollars: when you have some that are not needed at the time, it is better to stow them away for future use than to drop them where they can’t be found in case of need.
I can recall from my own experience but one case of sheer luck in story-telling. While dining at an Englishman’s magnificent place one summer, some peaches were served. As the English climate is too cool to ripen peaches, these had been grown on the side of a wall and under glass. They were superb in size and color yet they had small stones and little flavor. When my host told me of the care that had been lavished on them—they must have cost him a dollar each—my mind went back to the peach season at home, so I said to him:
“Peaches that would make your mouth water and send tears of joy chasing one another down your cheeks are to-day piled high on barges beside the wharves of New York and selling at a dollar a basket, with from one to two hundred peaches in each basket.”
I made this truthful statement in a matter-of-fact way, which was all it called for; but my host looked at me in amazement, then laughed heartily and said:
“Well, you Americans have always been remarkable for the stories you tell.”
To revert to Mr. Depew, he can tell a new story every day of the year, and add two or three by way of good measure; but their newness is generally in the patness of their application. He is so able at this sort of thing that he can turn a story against the man who tells it. But he confesses gleefully to having been caught once in the same manner. He was billed to make a speech somewhere up the state, and when he arrived the editor of the local paper called at his hotel to argue politics with him. The editor quoted newspaper statements frequently to support his arguments, but Depew replied: