Part 9 (2/2)

At any rate he gave me no clue as to Mark Twain's ident.i.ty. He turned away, and excused himself on the ground that he wanted to see if the audience was ”all in.”

”Don't bother,” I called after him. ”It will be _all in_ when I get through with it.”

But he never cracked a smile. I presume there were refinements of slang with which he was not familiar.

As to the others, however, I find as I run the n.o.ble army over in retrospect that many have won their way into my affections, and none are remembered save pleasantly. Several of them stand out preeminently for acts of self-sacrificing kindness on my behalf; notably one gentleman in Iowa who drove me over a distance of eighteen miles after midnight through a raging blizzard, requiring the unremitting efforts of four st.u.r.dy horses to pull us through, in order that I might catch a train back East and be with my children at Christmas time, and he was not a particularly emotional man, or anything of a sentimentalist, at that.

I shall never forget the spur of his answer to a remark I made to him that night on our way from the hotel to the lecture hall. The snow was falling lightly when he arrived, but the distance to the hall was so short that we walked it. As we came to the public square I noticed that hitched to the white railing about the county courthouse that stood in the middle thereof were some thirty or forty teams, harnessed to farm wagons of various types, large and small. It was already after eight o'clock, and I was surprised to find the wagons there at so late an hour.

”Your people work late, Mr. Robb,” said I, as we sauntered along.

”What do you mean by that?” he inquired.

”Why,” said I, ”those wagons over there. Isn't it a trifle late for your farmers to be in town?”

”Oh,” he said, ”those wagons--why no, Mr. Bangs. Those wagons are here for pleasure, not on business. They have brought in a good part of your audience. Some of your people to-night have driven in from as far as twenty miles to hear you.”

My heart sank. ”Great Scott!” I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”Twenty miles, eh? On a night like this--I--I hope I'll be good enough for that.”

”_I hope so!_” was his laconic response.

The rejoinder was as the p.r.i.c.k of a spur, and by its aid, as well as with the a.s.sistance of a delightfully receptive gathering of listeners who had traveled far to have a good time, and meant to have it anyhow--a characteristic of your Westerner--we pulled through in good condition.

When all was over this noncommittal Iowan bundled me up in a borrowed fur overcoat, and insisted on taking that all-night drive with me through the raging storm that I might be sent safely and rejoicing back to my youngsters awaiting my coming on the Atlantic coast. It was shortly after four in the morning when my train drew out of the distant station, and the last I saw of my kindly host he was standing on the railway platform, knee deep in the snow, in the spotlight of a solitary white electric lamp, hat in hand, and waving his farewells and good wishes for me and mine.

I rejoice to say that he has remained my friend over the eight or nine years that have since elapsed, and if by any chance he shall read these lines I trust they will serve to prove to him that my affection, as frequently expressed in my letters to him, is still quite as strong and as deep as one with his capacity for friendliness could possibly wish it to be. And I wish to add that his figure as it stands out in my memory has become a symbol to me of the kindness, and courtesy, and friendliness of the great-hearted people who dwell in what he and his fellows properly and pridefully refer to always as ”G.o.d's Own Country.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”The last I saw of my kindly host.”]

Another Iowa chairman, whose charming companions.h.i.+p and courtesy I shall always remember, will not mind, I am sure, if I record here a most amusing ”break” that he made at our first meeting, which, I hasten to add, he more than redeemed afterward when the stress and strain of the evening relaxed. He dwelt in what appeared to be a most flouris.h.i.+ng little city in the northern part of the State. I had arrived there early in the afternoon, and was so much impressed by the clean-cut appearance of everything I saw that I lingered upon the streets long after I should have sought my couch to rest up for the evening. The streets were as clean as a whistle. The dwellings were attractive in design and setting, and the business blocks were of a dignified if not ma.s.sive style of architecture. Best of all, if I could judge from those I saw to-ing and fro-ing upon the streets, the people themselves were alert and active.

In view of all this apparent prosperity I was a trifle surprised when the chairman arrived at the hotel to find him rather depressed. He was a clergyman, and at first glance seemed to be suffering from profound melancholy; so very profound indeed that I deemed it my duty to try to cheer him up.

”What a fine, prosperous little city you have here, Doctor,” said I with genuine enthusiasm. ”I've put in the greater part of the afternoon looking the place over, and I tell you it has filled me with joy.”

”Humph!” said he gloomily. ”It looks prosperous, but--_it ain't_! It's a bank-made town. The banks got here first, and induced people to come and settle on easy terms, and the terms haven't turned out quite so easy as they might. There's hardly a man in this town that isn't up to his chin in debt.”

”Oh, well, what of that?” said I, still resolved to win out on a tolerably hopeless proposition. ”Of course debt is a bad thing; but sometimes it acts as a spur. Your people are a bright and brainy looking lot. It won't take them long to settle up.”

”Oh, they look bright and brainy,” he returned sadly; ”but _they ain't_!

There isn't one man in ten 'll understand a half of what you say to them to-night.”

”Look here, Doctor!” said I, beginning to wax a trifle chilly myself, especially in the regions of my pedal extremities. ”What are you trying to do, discourage me?”

”Oh, no,” he replied, with a mournful shake of his head. ”If I'd been trying to discourage you, I'd have told you about our lecture hall. It's without any exception the meanest thing of its kind on the American continent. Why,” he added, holding out his hands in a gesture of utter despair, ”why, if we had a lecture hall that was only halfway decent, _we could afford to have somebody out here to talk to us that would be worth listening to!_”

The chairman who in the exuberance of his own eloquence forgets the name of the individual he is introducing, even though he has announced that that name is a ”household word,” is no creature of the imagination, and if the stories that are told of him seem hackneyed, it is not because they are so frequently told, but because they happen so frequently in the experience of all platform speakers, and in almost identical manner.

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