The explanation of the whole strange evening dawned upon me. Of course they were drunk, and so was the audience.
That night, I believe I was the only sober person on the premises.
.......
Yesterday, I had an interesting chat with a native of the State of Maine on the subject of my lecture at Portsea.
“You are perfectly wrong,” he said to me, “in supposing that your lecture was not appreciated. I was present, and I can assure you that the attentive silence in which they listened to you from beginning to end is the proof that they appreciated you. You would also be wrong in supposing that they do not appreciate humor. On the contrary, they are very keen of it, and I believe that the old New Englander was the father of American humor, through the solemn manner in which he told comic things, and the comic manner in which he told the most serious ones. Yes, they are keen of humor, and their apparent want of appreciation is only due to reserve, to self-control.”
And, as an illustration of it, my friend told me the following anecdote which, I have no doubt, a good many Americans have heard before:
Mark Twain had lectured to a Maine audience without raising a single laugh in his listeners, when, at the close, he was thanked by a gentleman who came to him in the green-room, to tell him how hugely every one had enjoyed his amusing stories. When the lecturer expressed his surprise at this announcement, as the audience had not laughed, the gentleman added:
“Yes, we never were so amused in our lives, and if you had gone on five minutes more, upon my word I don’t think we could have held out any longer.”
Such is New England self-control.
