until we reached the hall where I was to lecture. I found a little cold and shivering crowd seated there, waiting to be warmed by my eloquence, and without a chance to make my toilet and don my little “swallow tail,” I was ushered on the stage and introduced as the greatest orator, philosopher, poet, musician, statesman, scientist, actor and artist that ever came down the pike, whereupon I began to shake my jaw and pour out my metaphors; but somehow or other my eagle wouldn’t soar that night. He flopped his cold and flabby wings and rose and fell for an hour and a quarter. The audience departed like mourners from a funeral; but one good old lady lingered in the hall till I came off the stage and in her pity she sidled up to me and whispered, “I liked your little talk right well.” I found the freckled-face dreamer waiting at the door, and, cold as it was, the sweat was rolling down his cheeks. His face was the picture of despair when he handed me a hundred dollar bill and ten fives. I knew that his castle in the air had fallen. “How did you come out?” I asked. “Well, Governor,” he said, with a tremulous voice, “I’m out just eighteen dollars.” I took the roll he had given me out of my pocket and skinned off four bills in the light of the lamp dimly burning and said, “There are twenty dollars, my boy, and my blessing upon you.” He almost shouted and pressed my hand continuously as we walked through the mud to the little hotel on the starvation plan. Then there were a brief sleep and an easy conscience. I crossed the Father of Waters in triumph next morning and tarried in Memphis till the next train out. I went to the bank to buy New York exchange, took out my roll and lo! I had given old freckle-face the one hundred dollar bill and three fives. Then again there was a laugh and a lull—he laughed and I lulled. I pocketed my laugh and my loss and climbed into the pouch of a Southern Kangaroo on wheels and with a single hop I cleared the state of Mississippi and lit in Alabama. I climbed out and got into the ’bus in a beautiful little town among the blushing hills. Before I had washed the dust of travel from my brow, a spider-legged dude, with ambrosial locks curled and parted in the middle, came strutting like a clean-shaven and musk-scented dream into the dingy and time-honored little room where my valise and I were safely deposited, and with Chesterfieldian bow and a fluted voice announced that he had been designated by the ladies to introduce me that night to the audience. He shook his curls and said, “Governor, I have never delivered a speech in my life, but I have been at work on this one for about two weeks; and pardon me for saying that I think she’s a daisy.”
“Well, my friend,” I said, “I am fond of daisies.” With another shake of his locks he said, “The society people are all coming out to-night to hear me introduce you.” I shook my scanty locks and said, “I am glad there is something bringing them out.”
The clock struck 8. An elegant carriage stopped at the hotel door where I was waiting, and the sweet-scented dream in full evening dress, emerged, and gently took me by the arm and ushered me into it. We went whirling to the stage entrance of the theater, but as we walked up the stairs I observed that he tottered like a man ascending the gallows and his lips were colorless and quivering. We took our seats side by side behind the curtain. I motioned to the curtain man that all was ready, and with a whiz and a bang the curtain went up, and, sure enough, there in front of us, in the brilliantly lighted auditorium, was a breathing bouquet of youth and beauty and old age which greeted us with a storm of applause—the society folks had indeed come out to hear him introduce me. I nudged my friend and said, “Shoot.” He never budged. I nudged him again and said, “Go ahead!” He never budged. I looked around and his face was as white as a sheet and great drops of perspiration like beads of pearl were standing on his pallid brow. I said again, “Go ahead!” and in his agony he mumbled with muffled voice, “Governor, she’s gone.” There was a lull and a laugh, and in about two seconds he was gone. Before I had delivered half my sweetened goods I observed a number of yawns and stolen glances at watches and increasing signs that my crowd wanted to go. There is no anguish like that which a lecturer feels when his listless audience turns to frost and nips all his flowers of speech. The saddest spectacle in all the tide of time is a frost-bitten orator. He gathers up his little withered tropes and similes and vanishes, and all that saves him from suicide is the dream that he will blossom again in a more congenial garden. I collected my tribute money in the Alabama town and mounted a grasshopper train and went hopping and stridulating from rail to rail until I found a patch of clover in a rich and aristocratic Georgia town where I lounged and exchanged anecdotes with traveling men and with the natives until the lights were turned on and I stood all robed in my “swallow tail,” in the midst of as delightful an audience as ever listened to a sap-sucker speech or laughed at the unwinding of my little ball of yarns. A tall and handsome Georgia lawyer rose to introduce me and thus he spake:
“Ladies and Gentlemen: I have traveled a great deal in my life and on one of my journeys I took in the mountains of East Tennessee. I paused in that peculiar country to study the customs of that peculiar people. They make maple sugar in East Tennessee. They have great sugar orchards there, and one of the customs of the people is to tap the sugar trees in the spring when the sap begins to rise and they give the children in the family a tin cup and turn them out into the sugar orchard and never see them any more for six weeks. I have the pleasure to introduce to you to-night a sap-sucker from East Tennessee!”
There was a lull and a laugh,
And the sap began to run,
And they kindly took a quaff
From my sugar-trough of fun.
I settled with the secretary of the treasury and mounted a March hare train and sped away through many a cotton patch, from town to town, out of Georgia into the Old North State, and, flanking Charlotte, squatted at the State University at Chapel Hill, that classic spot of earth so rich with memories of the glorious past and still teeming with joyous student life, like those who have gone before, dreaming of the glorious future. There I met Dr. Battle, that grand old man who has fought a thousand battles for enlightenment and human happiness. There I met Alphonso Smith, one of the South’s foremost young men in the field of educational endeavor and whose soul is in tune with Southern progress and Southern development.
There, too, I met Eben Alexander, a brilliant star from the sky of Tennessee, shedding the soft light of Grecian literature upon the youthful brain of Carolina. I met a score of other stars in the faculty of this great University. I stood on the platform of its splendid auditorium and tossed bouquets at as refined and cultured an audience as ever sipped sap from a sugar tree. And when I packed my grip and started Southward I could not repress the sweet old song: