From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book. Bangs John Kendrick
Lord!" said I. "You don't look over sixty, anyhow."
"No," he smiled, "I don't – but that's Ioway. I've been farmin' out here for nigh onto seventy years, and we're all too busy to grow old. We live forever in Ioway. It's the grandest country on the footstool."
I didn't feel at all inclined to dispute him, considering his more than six feet of towering height, the fresh, healthful hardness of his weather-beaten face, the breadth of his shoulders, and depth of his chest. I contented myself with agreeing with him. And I didn't have to work hard to do that, either; for I have known magnificent Iowa as a most salubrious State for many years.
"Well, you see, sir," I said, "we can't all pick out our birthplaces. I was born in New York through no choice of my own. Some are born at birthplaces, some achieve birthplaces, and others have birthplaces thrust upon them – which last was my case."
"Same here," said he. "I was born in Ohier; but my folks moved out here when I was a babby. I've lived here ever since – and I'm glad of it. Of course I hain't had your advantages in gettin' an eddication – most o' mine's in my wife's name – but I've got some, and I've had to work so dam hard to get it that sometimes I think I appreciate it just a leetle more than you Eastern boys do who have it served to you on a silver platter. I didn't know how to read till I was twenty-five."
"I congratulate you," said I. "Considering the sort of things the greater part of our young people are reading to-day, I wish that condition might prevail a little more widely than it does."
"That's it," said he. "When a thing comes too easy we're not likely to make the best of it. When I think of how I had to sweat to learn to read you don't ketch me wastin' any o' my talents in that direction on trash."
"Then," I put in, "the chances are you've never read any of my books."
"Not many of 'em," he answered; "but one or two folks I know has read 'em, and they tell me there's nothin' deelyterious about 'em. But I tell ye it was some work for me to get the knack o' readin'; but when it come it come! Ye see, when I first come out here they wasn't any schools, and they wasn't any too much help around in those days, either. What with farmin', and diggin' food out o' the ground, and fightin' Injuns, they wasn't much spare time for children to spend in schools, even if we'd a had 'em. But along about the time I was twenty-three years old we started one. We built a little schoolhouse, and then we sent East for a schoolmarm, and when she come she boarded up at our house, and I celebrated by fallin' head over heels in love with her."
"Good work!" said I.
"You bet it was good work!" he blurted out, with an admiring glance at his son. "It was the best work I ever done, and the best part of it was she liked me, and the first thing we knew we got married. Well, sir, do you know what happened then? You're a smart man, and you won't need many guesses. It was the very thing we might ha' foreseen. The idee o' me, the husband o' the schoolmarm, not knowin' how to read – why, it – was – simply – pree – posterous!"
I don't believe Colonel Roosevelt ever put more syrupy electricity into the first syllable of his famous "dee-lighted" than that old gentleman got into the pre of his "preeposterous."
"Yes, sir," he ran on, "and there was no way out of it but that she should teach me to read. And she did! It was a tough proposition for that wonderful teacher of mine; but her patience finally pulled us through, and at the end of about a year I was ready to tackle 'most any kind of stunt in the way of a printed page. And then the burning question arose. Now that I know how, what in Dothan shall I read? That's a big problem, my friend, to a young feller that has earned his right to literature by the sweat of his brow. I wasn't goin' to waste any of my new gift on flashy stuff. What I wanted was the real thing, and one mornin' the problem was solved. A copy of a weekly paper come to the house, with an advertisement in it of a book called 'The Origin of the Species,' by a feller named Darwin, costin' two dollars and a half. That was some money in those days; but somehow or other that title sounded good and hefty, and I sent my little two-fifty by mail to the publisher, and within a week or two 'The Origin of the Species' was duly received, and I went at it."
"And what did you make out of it?" I asked, my interest truly aroused.
"Nothin' – not the first dam thing at first," said the old gentleman; "except it made me wonder if I hadn't lost my mind, or something. I sat down to read the thing, and by thunder, sir, I couldn't make head nor tail out of it! I'd always thought I knew something about the English language; but this time I was stumped, and it made me mad.
"'There's something happened to me,' I said to my wife. 'I've read this darned first page here over five times, and I'm blest if I can get a glimmer of anythin' out of it.' She smiled and advised me to try something easier; but, 'Not – on – your – life!' says I. 'I've been through fire and famine and wind and blizzard in my day. I've seen the roof over my head burnt to a cinder by savages, and I've fit Injuns, and come nigh bein' scalped by 'em, and in all my life, my dear,' says I, 'I hain't never been stumped yit, and I don't preepose to begin now, specially by a page o' printed words, said to be writ in the English language —not – on – your – life!'
"So I went at it again. I read it, and I reread it. I wrastled with every page, paragraph, and sentence in that book. Sometimes I had to put as much as five days on one page – but by Gorry, son, when I got it I got it good, and when it come it come with a rush – and now– "
The old man paused, drew himself up very straight, and squaring his shoulders he leaned forward and put his hands on my knees.
"And now, my friend," he said, his eye flashing with the joy of victory, "if there's anything you want to know about Darwin's Origin of the Species – you – just – ask – me!"
IV
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
If there is any man in this wide world who doubts the beauty and heart significance of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, he need only go out upon the lecture platform to have his eyes opened. I know of no workers in the whole field of human effort this side of tramphood itself who need more often the intervention of the Good Samaritan to get them out of trouble than the followers of that same profession.
Indeed, I shall not even except the profession of the Hobo; for there is a certain license granted to this latter sort of Knight of the Road that is denied to us of the Lyceum Circuit. We are prone to forgive a hungry tramp for breaking into a casual hencoop in search of the wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of an empty stomach, and when his weary bones demand a bed there are numerous expedients to which he may resort without loss of dignity. I doubt, however, that if Dr. Hillis, or the Hon. Champ Clark, or my humble self, were ever caught red-handed with a farmer's fowls dangling by their legs from our fists, or were to be discovered stealing a nap in the soft seclusion of a convenient hayloft, we should get off quite so easily as do poor old Dusty Rhodes and his famous colleague Weary Waggles.
Even as do our less loquacious brothers who foot it across country, and earn their living by making after-dinner speeches to sympathetic farmers' wives, so also do we more advanced members of the Fraternity of Wanderers have often to throw ourselves upon the tender mercies of others to get us out of the unexpected scrapes into which the most careful of us sometimes fall. Life is ordinarily no very simple thing, even to the man who lives all his days in one spot, and knows every curve, crook, and corner of his special surroundings. How much more complicated must it become, then, to him who has to change his spots every twenty-four hours, and day after day, night in and night out, readjust himself to new and unfamiliar conditions!
For the most part our troubles, such as they are, have to do with the natural perversity of train schedules, or unexpected visitations of Nature which will disarrange the most carefully forecast calculations of men. In the machinery of our existence there are probably more human cogs involved, which require our own individual attention, than in any other known mechanism. Even the actor on the road is better looked after than are we; for he has a manager to arrange for his transportation, to look after his luggage, and to attend to all the little things that go to make or mar the comfort of travel while we of the platform go out wholly upon our own, unattended, and compelled at all times to shift for ourselves.
I have been in many a scrape