Part 20 (2/2)

”Slit it up the back, and I'll pin it on you,” suggested the ever-ready Muse.

”But it isn't mine,” said I.

”Buy it,” said she.

In an instant I had the room clerk on the telephone. ”Will you sell me that vest?” I asked.

”Why--no,” he said. ”I don't want to sell it.”

”But I need it in my business,” I pleaded.

”Well, you've got it, haven't you?”

”Yes, I've got it all right,” I replied; ”_but I can't get into it without putting a yard of extra width in the back_. Come on--be a good fellow and sell it to me,” I added with all the pathos that I could summon.

”No,” he answered with a chuckle, ”no--I couldn't sell it to you; _but I'll give it to you with all the pleasure in the world_!”

In this fas.h.i.+on was the emergency met, and I went out before my audience that night on time in improvised raiment pinned on to my person, ”a thing of shreds and patches,” and blazoning as to my s.h.i.+rt-front with all the resplendent gilt of three bra.s.s tacks, all of which brought vividly to my mind the words of Antonio in ”The Merchant of Venice”:

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

It may seem to the casual observer that such matters as s.h.i.+rt studs and white waistcoats are of too slight importance to worry a speaker; but a ”whole date” was once saved to me by the fact that I wore a high silk hat, which caused a kindly livery-stable keeper to drive me eighteen miles from a stranded railway train through a blizzard to the town of my destination, because he judged from my hat that _I was a member of a favorite minstrel troupe that was to perform there the same night_. When he discovered that I was only one of ”them lecture fellers,” for whose free tickets he had no use, he was terribly disappointed.

Anyhow, an audience likes a man to be wholly himself, and cares little for a speaker who modifies his dress according to his ideas of how they wish him to look. A popular and prominent candidate for Governor of New York once lost a large number of votes that might have elected him because in addressing a gathering of workingmen at an East Side rally, the night being insufferably hot, he took off his coat and collar, and spoke to them in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves. The men were deeply offended. They significantly asked if he would have taken off his coat in the presence of a fas.h.i.+onable uptown audience, and would have none of his presumed a.s.sumption that they were any less worthy of his respect, or careful of their own dignity, than his so-called smarter, better-cla.s.s people.

I have always found the full evening dress and high collar of an effete civilization wholly comfortable, and wear them accordingly wherever I lecture, whether it be in the rarefied social atmosphere of high academic circles, or in a mining camp where there dwell possibly rougher, but none the less genuine, human folk. I think that in the latter environment indeed it is a positive aid to success to do so; for there can be no doubt that reduced to its essentials the evening dress of the modern male creature is really a funny thing, and in an evening devoted somewhat to humor any element that is in even the least degree mirth-provoking does not come amiss.

Perhaps the most overpowering sense of being confronted by an emergency came to me again back in 1898 out of an experience that turned out to be critical only in my own imaginings. Most of our troubles are, I fancy, imaginary--purely psychological, as the modern phrase has it--but while they are on they are none the less acute for all that. On the occasion of which I write, at a more than feverish moment in our relations with Spain and Cuba, I was summoned to lecture at the attractive little port of Brunswick, Georgia. It was here, by the way, that I first had the pleasure of seeing my name on a hotel bill of fare, which in the platform world is the height of fame, just as in the theatrical world it is the acme of distinction for a star to see his name pasted on an ash barrel, or spread across the h.o.a.rdings of a ten-acre lot full of tin cans and other undesirable bric-a-brac. They had me down on the supper bill among the hot breads, somewhat like this:

HOT BREAD Tea Biscuit. Corn m.u.f.fins. Graham Gems.

Popovers.

John Kendrick Bangs, Casino, To-night.

But that was not the Emergent Moment of which I would speak. This came later, at the conclusion of my lecture, when a young man who in the dim light of the street was scarcely perceptible, intercepted me as I left the hall.

”Mr. Bangs,” said he, ”I have come here from Captain Maguffy of the _Samuel J. Taylor_, to present his compliments to the skipper of the 'House-Boat on the Styx.' The captain was detained from your lecture to-night, to his very great regret; but he wishes you would drop all formality and join him at supper.”

Knowing neither Captain Maguffy (the name is a subst.i.tute for the real one) nor his amba.s.sador, I thanked the latter, saying that while I was grateful for his courtesy I was really very tired, had much work ahead of me, and begged to be excused.

”The captain never takes no for an answer,” persisted the young man. ”He will be terribly disappointed if you don't come, and as a matter of fact, counting surely upon your good fellows.h.i.+p, he has made special preparations for you.”

Unfortunately--or fortunately, as it later turned out--among other serious defects in my education I have never been taught the firmer uses of the negative. I have never been able to say no to anybody as if I really meant it, and it has involved me in more difficulties than I care to record here or elsewhere. In any event, my regrets growing fainter and fainter, and Captain Maguffy's amba.s.sador's insistence more and more marked, the sum total of some thirty-two negatives soon developed into one positive affirmative.

”All right,” I said finally, ”I'll run in on the captain; but only for a moment, just long enough to shake hands, say howdido, and get back to bed. I must be in bed by midnight as a matter of principle.”

The amba.s.sador thereupon a.s.sisted me into one of those indescribable one-horse ”shays” that seem to sprout in the vicinity of Southern railway stations and hotels about as lushly as mint in the patches of the Carolinas. I used to think when I was a resident of Yonkers that the Hudson River Valley was a sort of hack heaven, whither all sorts of deceased vehicles went when they died; but several tours of the South since have convinced me that that idea was mere presumption on my part.

The South, as well as the Hudson River Valley, fairly burgeons with vehicular antiques that would delight the soul of an archaeologist anxious to find the connecting link between the carriages of the Caesars and those of Andrew Jackson and his successors up to the merry days of Hayes.

The particular rattledy-bang old combination of wabbling wheels and hair-erupting cus.h.i.+ons into which I was ushered was drawn by a white horse, and driven by a colored man. The horse was so very white that it could hardly be seen on the white coquina roads, and the negro was so black that he was equally imperceptible against the background of the night; so that I seemed to be floating through the night enjoying sensations similar to those of a man on his first journey in an aeroplane. The whole effect was eery in the extreme, especially as we drove and drove and drove, and floated and floated and floated, without apparently getting anywhere.

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