My audience in this particular spot was delightfully responsive; so much so that I was all of two hours in the delivery of a lecture that ordinarily takes me an hour and a quarter to deliver. It was as exhilarating as a cross-country run, with turf and skies just right. But for the pauses made necessary by the interruptions in appreciation I should have galloped across the finish line in less than an hour. So stimulating in fact was the readiness of the good people before me to take what I had to say and run away with it, that, while I was immortally tired when I went out upon the platform, when I finished I could have started in and done it all over again with zest.

But even with so pleasing a background of responsiveness, there was one young man seated in the front row who was a source of particular pleasure to me. He was a rather distinguished looking youth, with flashing eyes, and somewhat longish blond hair, and a physique that suggested a modern Viking. There was something in his face that suggested the scholarly habit – occasionally his expression was wistfully questioning. His eyes never left my face while I was speaking, and his physical attitude, forward-leaning, and a trifle tense, seemed to betoken an interest in what I had to say that was more than gratifying, and his mouth was kept half open, ever ready for action. If there was to be anything to laugh at, he at least was not going to be caught napping, or in any way unprepared, if by keeping his mouth open he could remove all obstacles that would have prevented the easy flow of his mirth.

And his laugh! I wish I might have a rubber record of that laugh to secrete in an automatic machine located somewhere in the middle of my lecture halls, so that in response to the pressure of an electric button it could be let loose at certain psychological moments. It was as infectious a laugh as I ever listened to, and there were times when its contagion brought me perilously close to seeming to laugh at my own jokes – which is a dangerous thing for a lecturer to do, and contrary to the technic of the "business," which requires humorous periods to be delivered with a face solemn to the point of the funereal. It had really musical modulations, rising from pianissimo to fortissimo on the wings of nicely graded crescendos, and returning whence it had come with a sort of rippling gurgle that was mighty fetching.

Finally not only was nothing I had in mind lost upon him, but he actually appeared to discover subtleties of wit in my discourse of whose presence I had not myself had the slightest suspicion. It is hardly necessary to say that he was pleasing unto my soul, and naturally enough I spoke of him afterward to my chairman.

"Well, Mr. Bangs," said the chairman as we walked back to the hotel together after the lecture was over, "what did you think of your audience to-night? Some responsiveness there, all right, eh?"

I was impulsively enthusiastic enough to say that I thought it was a "corking good audience." "If they were all like that," said I, "this work would be as easy as cutting calves-foot jelly with an ax."

"I thought you liked them," said he. "Our people here are appreciative, and they believe the laborer is worthy of his hire in showing it."

"I'll put Blanksville down in my red-letter book," said I. "But tell me who and what is that rather distinguished looking young man with the longish blond hair and snappy eyes, who sat in the aisle seat of the front row next to the white-haired old lady with an audiphone? He had a wistful sort of face, and – "

"Oh, I know who you mean," said the chairman. "He's So-and-So. What about him – he didn't bother you, I hope?"

"On the contrary," said I, "I loved him. He was about the most appreciative chap I ever talked to. He fairly hung on every word I spoke, and when it came to a funny point I'm blest if he didn't meet me more than halfway!"

"Yes," said the chairman, "he would. He's half-witted."

My swelling head immediately resumed its normal proportions, and when I left Blanksville the following morning the only discomfort I found in wearing my regular hat was that in some way or other it seemed to have grown a little too large for me, and showed a tendency to settle down over my ears. I have nevertheless comforted myself with the thought that sometimes the difference between half-wittedness and genius is so slight to the eye of the familiar beholder that wise men are not infrequently believed by their neighbors to be fools. My young friend after all may have been a poet, and, like some prophets, "without honor in his own country."

VII
FRIENDS OF THE ROAD

In the days of my cynicism I used to laugh in my sleeve, and occasionally in print, at the ways of the politicians and statesmen en route, who have their pictures taken hobnobbing with locomotive engineers, trainmen, and Pullman porters. Since I have myself become a professional wanderer and have come into closer, somewhat enforced, fellowship with these individuals I laugh at the politicians and statesmen no more. On the contrary I commend them, and I think with appreciation and gratitude of a poem by George Sterling, one of our real voices to-day calling down blessings on the heads of these "workers of the night" to whose watchful care we who travel intrust our lives.

One who makes only occasional journeys by rail is not likely to think very much about the man at the throttle; but when one has practically lived on the rail for two or three months running, not only the man at the throttle, but the man at the switch, the flagman, the fireman, the conductor, and the Pullman porter as well, come to be in a very real sense members of his family.

Mr. Carnegie's hero medals are often bestowed, and worthily, upon men who on sudden impulse have performed some deed of heroism and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others; but I have yet to hear of one of these desirable possessions being bestowed upon the flagman who, in the face of a raging blizzard, at midnight, the thermometer at zero, leaves the comparative comfort of the rear car, and walks, whistling for company, back some four or five hundred yards along the icy track, and stands there with his red lantern in hand to warn a possibly advancing train behind of danger ahead.

When the ice-incased wires are down, and the signal and switch towers are out of commission because of the rampageous elements, how many of us who lie comfortably asleep in the warm berths of our stalled trains give so much as a thought to the man outside in the freezing cold of the night, keeping the switches clear that we may proceed, or to the flagman at the rear, shelterless before the storm, who stands between us and disaster? Most of us, I fancy, do not think of them at all, and I fear that many of us so occupy ourselves with self-sympathy on these occasions that we find no words of commendation in our hearts for anybody connected with the whole railway system; but rather words of condemnation for that system and everybody connected with it, from the innocent stockholder looking for dividends, all the way down to those poor devils who have forgotten under the stress of demoralizing conditions to fill the water tanks that we may drink and get our fair share of the nation's supply of typhoid germs.

For myself, I can truthfully say that the remark of a railway official made to me many years ago in response to one of my complaints has of late years gathered considerable force and significance. This gentleman was a neighbor of mine, and one Christmas he presented me with an annual pass on the Hudson River Railroad. It was a delightful gift, and I used it with enthusiasm. One morning, however, as he and I sat together on a local train that had in some mysterious way managed to lose four hours on a thirty-minute run, I turned to him and said:

"Charlie, sometimes I wish I had never accepted that confounded old pass of yours. I've bartered my freedom of speech for a beggarly account of empty minutes. If it wasn't for that blankety-blank pass, I could tell you what I think of your blinkety-blink old road. Here we are four hours late on a thirty-minute run!"

"Why, my dear boy," he replied with an amiable smile, "you are dingety-dinged lucky to get in at all!"

Individually I have experienced so much kindliness and courtesy at the hands of the personnel of our railroads in all parts of the United States that I sometimes get real satisfaction out of sharing with them the discomforts of travel. I have discovered without half trying that there are profound depths of friendliness in them which need to be given only half a chance to manifest themselves. Rarely indeed have I met with discourtesy at their hands, and many a weary hour has been cheered by their native wit. For the most part, naturally, my contact has been with the station agent and the conductor – and the Pullman porter.

While I deplore the abuses of tipping in this and other countries, I have rarely grudged the Pullman porter his well earned extra quarter. Perhaps the general run of us have not had the time, nor the inclination, to acquaint ourselves with the difficulties of the Pullman porter's job. We don't realize that with a car full of people ten passengers will want the car cooled off, ten others will want a little more heat, five will complain that there is too much air, five others will complain that there is too little; and poor Rastus, ground between the two millstones of complaint, has to make a show of pleasing everybody. He above all others would be justified in announcing as his favorite poem those fine old lines:

As a rule a man's a fool:
When it's hot he wants it cool;
When it's cool he wants it hot —
Always wanting what is not.

I recall one fine old darky once on a train running into Cleveland, who was very unhappy over a complaint of mine that, with a car crowded to the limit with women and children, some cigarette fiend had vitiated what little air there was in the car by smoking in his berth. I was awakened at three o'clock in the morning by the oppressive odor of burning paper and near-perique. There is no mistaking the origin of that aromatic nuisance, and my gorge rose at the boorish lack of consideration that the smoker showed for the comfort and convenience of his fellow travelers. I pressed the button alongside my berth, and a moment later the porter was peering in at me through the curtains.

"Look here, John," said I in a stage whisper, "this is a little too much! Somebody in this car is smoking cigarettes, and I think it's a condemned outrage. With all these ladies on board it seems to me that you ought to insist that the man who can't restrain his passion for cigarettes should get off at the next stop and take the first cattle car he finds running to where he thinks he is going."

"Yas, suh," returned the porter sadly. "It's too bad, suh, an' I've tried my bes' to stop 'em twice, suh."

"Well, by George!" said I, sitting up. "If they won't stop for you, maybe they will for me. If any man aboard this car thinks he can get away with a nuisance like this – "

"Yas, suh," said the porter; "but that's jest whar de trouble comes in, suh. I been after 'em, suh; but it ain't no use. In bofe cases, suh, it was de ladies deirsefs dat was a-doin' all de smokin', suh."

And he grinned so broadly as I threw myself back on my pillow that when I finally got to sleep again I dreamed of the opening to the Mammoth Cave, through a natural association of ideas.

Occasionally one finds some trouble in keeping ahead of the Pullman porter in the matter of repartee. There used to be on the night run to Boston a venerable chap, black as the ace of spades, but patriarchal in his dignity, of whom I was very fond. He was as wide awake at all hours of the day and night as though sleep had not been invented. Like most of his class, he was inclined to bestow titles on his charges.

"Yo' got enough pillows, Cap'n?" he asked on one occasion, after he had fixed my berth.

"Yes, Major," I replied, putting him up a peg higher. "But it's a cold night, and I think another blanket might come in handy."

"All right, Cunnel," said he, adding to my honors. "I'll git hit right away."

"Thank you, General," said I, as he returned with the desired article.

"Glad to serve yo', Admiral," said he with deep gravity.

"And now, Bishop," said I, resolved to keep at it until I scored a victory, "suppose – "

"Hol' on, mistuh!" he retorted instantly. "Hol' on! Dey ain't mo'n one puhson in de Universe whut's higher 'n a bishop, an' I knows mighty well yo' ain't Him!"

Our dusky brothers not infrequently fill me with a sense of consolation in difficult moments. Two such cases occur to me at this writing; one in my own experience, and the other in a story I heard in the South last winter, the mere thought of which has many times since served to soften my woes in troublesome moments.

The first occurred several years ago, when the steel passenger cars first came into commission. Being myself of a somewhat inflammable nature, I make it a rule to travel on these in preference to the old-fashioned tinder boxes of ten years ago whenever I can. On this particular occasion, however, on a hurried midwinter night run, I found myself in a highly ornate, lumbering Pullman of the vintage of '68. It was an essentially mid-Victorian affair, and in the matter of decoration was a flamboyant specimen of the early A. T. Stewart period of American interior embellishment.

Those whose memories hark back that far will remember that the Pullman Company's money at that time was largely expended on lavish ornamentation of a peculiarly assertive rococo style, consisting for the main part of an eruption of gew-gaws which ran riot over the exposed surfaces of the car like a rash on the back of a baby. The external slant of the upper berth in these cars was ever a favorite surface for this particular kind of gew-gawsity, and no occupant of a lower berth known to me ever succeeded in getting safely into bed, or out of it, without having one or more of these lovely patterns imprinted on the top of his head with more force than delicacy. In collisions the occupant of one of these varnish-soaked orgies of fretwork had about as much chance of escaping unscathed as what a dear clerical friend of mine in a lay sermon once characterized as "a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through the depths of purgatory." Whenever I find myself on one of these cars I think instinctively of just three things, and in this order – my past life, my possible permanent future, and my accident insurance policy – and try to comfort myself by playing both ends against the middle.

In my haste on this occasion I had not particularly noticed the characteristics of the car until I attempted to remove my shoes to retire. As I sat up after untying the laces I was brought to a painful realization of the old-time nature of the vehicle by having impressed most forcibly upon the top of my head the convolutions of an empire wreath, carved out of pine splints, and embossed with gold leaf, which served to give Napoleonic dignity to the upper berth when not in use. The jar, plus the ensuing association of ideas, brought to my mind an uneasy realization of the probable truth that the car was of antique pattern, about as solid as any other box of potential toothpicks, and as fireproof as a ball of excelsior soaked with paraffin. At the moment the porter happened to be passing with the carpet-stepped ladder to assist a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound traveling man into the berth overhead, and I addressed him.

"See here, porter!" said I. "What kind of car do you call this, anyhow? Isn't this the car Shem, Ham, and Japhet took when they moved back to town from Ararat?"

"Yas, suh," he answered. "She suttinly am an ol' timah, suh."

"Well, I don't feel exactly safe, George," said I. "Aren't there any steel cars on this train?"

"Oh, we's all safe enough, suh," said George, with the assurance of one who is so well intrenched that no foe on earth could possibly get at him. "De cyar behind an' de cyar in front, dey's bofe steel, suh."

I had never expected to enjoy in this life the sensations that I suspect are those of a mosquito when he finds himself caught between the avenging palms of a horny-fisted son of toil, who has at last got a pestiferous nuisance where he wants him; but I must confess that such were my sensations that night; and every time the train came to a sudden stop in its plunging through the dark I had a not too comfortable sense that when the steel front of the car behind finally came to meet the iron end of the car ahead, through the unresisting mass of splinters and Empire wreaths between, I would personally, in all likelihood, more closely resemble a cubist painting of a sunset on the Barbary Coast than a human being. I imagine that what really carried me uninjured through the nervous ordeal of that night was the amused view I took of good old George's notions as to what constituted absolute safety.

The other incident, as narrated to me by a fellow traveler, has given me much comfort in exasperating moments. In sections of the South and West the engineers have not as yet mastered the art of stopping or starting their trains gently. When they stop they stop grindingly, with jolts and jars sudden and violent enough to send a snoring traveler full of stored up impetus head first through a stone wall; or, if it be in the daytime, with a jerk of such a nature as would snap his head off completely if the latter were not so firmly fastened to his neck. It is a method that may do very well for freight, but for passengers and dynamite it has its disadvantages.

It was on a line renowned for its jarring methods that the incident of which my friend told me is alleged to have occurred. A train made up of day coaches and Pullman sleepers broke through a wooden trestle and landed in a frightful mass of twisted wreckage on the bottom of a ravine some eighty feet below. The wrecking crew worked nobly, and after several hours of heroic effort came to a crushed and splintered sleeper at the base of the ruin. There amid the debris, sleeping peacefully, with a beam across his chest, lay the porter, wholly unhurt, and dreaming. He was even snoring. The foreman of the wrecking crew, with suitable language expressing his amazement at the miracle, finally succeeded in getting Sambo half awake.

"Wh-whut's de mattah?" stammered Sambo, sitting up, and gazing dazedly at the ruin on every side.

"Matter?" echoed the foreman. "Why, Jumping Jehoshaphat, man! Don't you know that this whole dod-gasted train has fallen through the trestle? It's a wonder you weren't killed. Didn't you feel anything?"

"Why, yas, boss," said Sambo. "I did feel sumpin' kind o' jolty; but I t'ought dey was jes' a-puttin' on de dinah at Jackson."

So it is that nowadays when these jolting, jarring notes come along to vex my soul I no longer lose my temper as I used to do, but think rather of that old darky and "de dinah at Jackson," and wax mellow, feeling that that story alone, true or not, is a full justification of all the sufferings I or others have had to endure at the ungentle hands of the freight engineer at the passenger throttle.

These men on the engines are great characters, and whenever I can get into touch with them I do so. In some of my zigzagging trips hither and yon in the Middle and Northwest I often find myself back to-day on some train or other that has carried me along on some previous trip, and it is frequently much like a family reunion when I meet the crew for a third or fourth time. "Glad to see you back," is a familiar greeting from conductors, engineers, flagmen, and porters alike. There is one diner on a Western run that I have visited so frequently that I receive all the kindly special attention one used to look for at an inn to which he was a constant visitor; and I think it all grew out of the fact that the first time I traveled on that particular car I summoned the man in charge to complain of the pie.

"I don't like to complain," said I; "but this pie – "

"What's the matter with the pie?" he asked, bristling a little.

"Why," said I, "it's so confoundedly good that even a whole one couldn't satisfy me!"

Ever since the registry of that complaint I have really had more than the law allows on that particular car. Preferential treatment that would fill the Interstate Commerce Commission with anguish is always mine. Neither the rack nor all the fires of the Inquisition could extract from me its precise identity, lest its kindly crew be fined for overcourtesy to a specific individual.

But to return to the engineers: I have always cherished the memory of a stolid old graybeard in command of a special train circumstances once compelled me to hire in order to meet an Arizona date for which there was no possible regular connection by rail. My special started from Phœnix shortly after midnight of a stormy day, to carry me down to Maricopa, there to connect with an early morning express into Tucson. The train consisted of an engine and a single day coach. Inasmuch as it was mine for the time being, and at considerable cost, I decided to exercise my proprietary rights and ride on the engine. A heavy rain which had been falling all day had changed the dry, sandy beds of the Salt and Gila rivers to torrential streams, to the great disadvantage of the roadbeds. We literally seemed to be feeling our way along in the dark, until suddenly the clouds broke away and a glorious moon shed its radiance over everything. Just at this point the engineer with a startled exclamation seized the throttle and brought us to a disquietingly abrupt stop. He whispered a word or two to the fireman, who immediately descended from the cab and ran on ahead along the track until he was completely lost to sight.

"What's the trouble?" said I somewhat apprehensively, as the engineer began examining his machinery.

"Oh, nothing," said he. "I've just sent Bill ahead to see if the bridge is still there."

"Bridge? Still there?" I queried. "There's nothing wrong with the bridges, I hope."

"Well – I dunno," said he. "Look over there," he added with a wave of his hand off to the left of us. I peered across the stream in the direction he had indicated, and there in the bright light of the moon I could see that two huge iron spans of the Santa Fé bridge had been completely undermined by the fierce flow of the waters, and now lay flat on their sides in midstream.

"Ooo-hoo! All right!" came the voice of the fireman from the dark ahead.

I sat transfixed and speechless as the engineer started slowly ahead and moved at a snail's pace along the soggy road. We came to the bridge, which was still standing, in a few moments; but oh how it swayed as we inched our way across! I should have felt safer if that train and I were lying together in a hammock. We fairly lurched across it, and I should not have been at all surprised if at any moment the whole structure had collapsed under our weight. Finally we got across in safety, and my heart condescended to emerge from my boots.

"By George, Mr. Engineer!" said I. "If there's any more like that, I guess I'll get off and walk the rest of the way."

"All right, mister," said the engineer cheerfully. "If you prefer the company of rattlesnakes and Gila monsters to mine, go ahead – and may the Lord have mercy on your soul!"

I decided to remain.