Higbie’s reply has comeⒺexplanatory note, and I recognize with satisfaction that I was not mistaken about him. He hid himself, temporarily, behind his sad attempt at literature, and was odiously artificial. But the real Higbie, the genuine Higbie, the manly Higbie, the [begin page 183] common-sense Higbie, was there all the time; and in his letter just received he has come out from behind that mask and is his own self again, and lovable and welcome. I was uncompromisingly frank with him—I had to be, and he was worthy of that honorable treatment. He has taken his medicine like a man, and I believed he would.

This letter of his is in strong and agreeable contrast with his deadly literature. His literature is not literature, but his letter is. His literature came from a vacuum; his letter comes from his heart. Speech that comes from the heart is sure to be literature; there is no power in artless spelling and uncouth phrasing that can take that great quality out of it. It is a refreshment, in a world of insincerities and shallow vanities, to come across a man who can ask for a criticism and mean itⒶtextual note when he asks it. I shall leave his spelling untinkered, for, being honest spelling, it has a dignity of its own. This cannot hurt him, for it will not see print while he is alive. Higbie and his letters and his literature will have interest for readers in the far future, when they shall have gathered about them the mellowing haze of a long perspective. Let them lie here and wait. Their day will come.

I have been away on a holiday for ten days, at sea in Mr. Rogers’s yacht with some other young people, and when we were lying at anchor at Bar HarborⒺexplanatory note an incident occurred that fetched up out of the sub-cellars of my memory a matter which had lain buried there and forgotten for a quarter of a century.

In that old day somebody started a club called the Fellow-Craftsmen’s Club, and I attended its first banquetⒺexplanatory note, upon invitation. I think it was its last banquet, too, as I have never heard of it since. It probably died that night—and it may be that I helped to kill it. There were sixty-five men present, and Gilder was in the chair. Gilder was pretty youngⒶtextual note at that time, and pretty timid, and correspondingly diffident—not ungraceful qualities, and they still adorn him in a modified degree. Major J. B. Pond was alive in those daysⒺexplanatory note, and very much alive. He had been a lecture agent for some years, and was always [begin page 184] diligently fussing around in the interest of his vocation and inflicting new talent upon the public. In the matter of pushing and advertising and over-praising his clients he was conscienceless. During the banquet I asked him to go and say to Gilder, in his private ear, that he had brought with him a young Southerner, unknown, but full of talent, who had invented a scheme for teaching impromptu oratory, and it would be a great benevolence to a struggling young fellow if Gilder would allow him to get up there and explain his inventionⒶtextual note and persuade the Fellow-Craft Club to take him under its wing and find him some classes to teach.

It was a gross and degraded proposition, in every way indelicate and offensive, and naturally it shocked Gilder, who tried to beg off; but Pond stuck to him and I can see the pair yet—the vast Pond bendingⒶtextual note over the lean and gentle Gilder, buzzing industriously at his ear—and Gilder making pathetic gestures revealing what he was suffering. Gilder said,Ⓐtextual note

“Pond, I can’t think of such a thing. Can’t you see, yourself,Ⓐtextual note that it is unthinkable? It is an atrocity. These people wouldn’t stand it for a moment. You are always trying to crowd your goods in everywhere that there is a chance to advertise them, but this is no place for it. It would be indecent. If I should try to intrude this obscure adventurer upon these men they would rightly regard it as an impertinence, and they would resent it. Now go away, and drop the matter.”

But Pond didn’t go away. He still buzzed and buzzed, and begged and implored, and at last Gilder surrendered. When speech-making time came he got up and haltingly and hesitatingly informed the banqueteers that there was present among them an unknown young man from the South who would like the privilege of placing before them an invention of his for qualifying novices to get up, upon call, and make speeches upon any subject without previous preparation, and without diffidence or embarrassment. This young man——Ⓐtextual note

Mr. Pond sang out,

“LanghorneⒶtextual note—Mr. Samuel Langhorne.”Ⓐtextual note

These are my first two names, but nobody happened to notice that. Gilder proceeded,Ⓐtextual note

“With your permission, gentlemen, I will askⒶtextual note Mr. Langhorne—”

He got no further. He was interrupted by a rising wave of dissent which went on rising until it broke into a storm. Gilder stood there defeated, and uncertain as to what he might better do—but I got up at that point, and, being recognized, was most heartily received, because the clubⒶtextual note thought they were now rid of Mr. Langhorne, and consequentlyⒶtextual note they were properly grateful. I said something like this:

“I am Langhorne—that is my middle name. I am the inventor of the scheme which has been mentioned, and I think it a good one and likely to be of great benefit to the world; still this hope may be disappointed, and therefore I can’t afford to use my real name, lest in trying to acquire a new and possibly valuable reputation I destroy the valuable one which I already possess, and yet fail to replace it with a new one. I propose to take classes and teach, under this apparently fictitious name. I wish to describe my scheme to youⒶtextual note and prove its value by illustration. The scheme is founded upon a certain fact—a fact [begin page 185] which long experience has convinced me is Ⓐtextual note a fact, and not a fiction of my imagination. That fact is this: those speakers who are called upon at a banquet after the regular toasts have been responded to, are generally merely called upon by name and requested to get up and talk—that is all. No text is furnished them and they are in a difficult situation, apparently—but only apparently. The situation is not difficult at all, in fact, for they are usually men who know that they may be possibly called upon, therefore they go to the banquet prepared—after a certain fashion. The speeches which these volunteers make are all of a pattern. They consist of three first-rate anecdotes—first-waterⒶtextual note jewels, so to speak, set in the midst of a lot of rambling and incoherent talk, where they flash and sparkle and delight the house. The speech is made solely for the sake of the anecdotesⒶtextual note whereas they shamelessly pretend that the anecdotes are introduced upon sudden inspiration, to illustrate the reasonings advanced in the speech. There are Ⓐtextual note no reasonings in the speech. The speech wanders along in a random and purposeless way for a while; then, all of a sudden, the speaker breaks out as with an unforeseen and happy inspiration and says ‘How felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who’—then he explodes his first anecdote. It’s a good one—so good that a storm of delighted laughter sweeps the house and so disturbsⒶtextual note its mental balance for the moment that it fails to notice that the anecdote didn’t illustrate what the man had been saying—didn’t illustrate anything at all, indeed,Ⓐtextual note but was dragged in by the scruff of the neck and had no relation to the subject which the speaker was pretending to talk about. He doesn’t allow the laughter to entirely subside before he is off and hammering away at his speech again. He doesn’t wait, because that would be dangerous. It would give the house time to reflect; then it would see that the anecdote did not illustrate anything. He goes flitting airily along in his speech in the same random way as before, and presently has another of those inspirations and breaks out again with his ‘How felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who’—then he lets fly his second anecdote, and again the house goes down with a crash. Before it can recover its senses he is away again, and cantering gailyⒶtextual note toward the home stretch, filling the air with a stream of empty words that have no connection with anything; and finally he has his third inspiration, introduced with the same set form, ‘How felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who’—then he lets fly his last and best anecdote and sits down under tempests and earthquakes of laughter, and everybody in his neighborhood seizes his hand and shakes it cordially and tells him it was a splendid speech—splendid.

“ThatⒶtextual note is my scheme. I hope to get classes. I shall charge a high rate, because the pupilⒶtextual note will need but one lesson. By grace of a single lesson I will make it possible for the novice who has never faced an audience in his life to rise to his feet, upon call, without trepidation or embarrassment and make an impromptu speech upon any subject that can be mentioned, without preparation of any kind, and also without even any knowledge of the subject which may be chosen for him. He shall always be ready,Ⓐtextual note for he shall always have his three anecdotes in his pocket,Ⓐtextual note written on a card, and thus equipped he shall never fail. I beg you to give me a text and let me prove what I have been saying—any text, any subject will do—all subjects are alike under my system. Give me a text.”

[begin page 186]

There was a good deal of buzzing among the membership—then somebody spoke up and said,Ⓐtextual note

“There is a nigger in this woodpile somewhere. There is collusion. This is a put-upⒶtextual note hand. He’s got a confederate here who will furnish him a text that has already been agreed upon. We want to beat that game.”

Somebody else spoke up and said,Ⓐtextual note

“There is only one way to beat it. Let every man present choose a text and write it on a piece of paper, not allowing any one else to see it—then pass a hat and collect the texts. The hat shall be held so high, when it reaches Gilder, thatⒶtextual note he can’t look into it and make a selection; he must reach up and take out the first slip of paper his fingers touch—and that shall be this fraud’s text, and will beat his game.”

So the hat was passed, and everybody dropped a text into it. When it got to Gilder he reached up, took outⒶtextual note a slip of paper and read from it “Portrait PaintingⒶtextual note.”

The house was delighted, and shouted with a happy unanimity,Ⓐtextual note

“Now then go ahead and let us see where you will come out with your scheme.” I said,Ⓐtextual note

“It is a good enough text. I want no better. I’ve already told you that all texts are alike, under this noble system. All that I need to do now is to talk a straight and uninterrupted stream of irrelevancies which shall ostensibly deal learnedly and instructively with the subject of portrait painting. The stream must not break anywhere; I must never hesitate for a word, because under this scheme the orator that hesitates is lost; it can give the house a chance to collect its reasoning faculties, and that is a thing which must not happen.”

I began with the earliest known example of the art of portrait painting—that picture in outline of the extinct mammoth which primeval man carved upon the bone of a deer’s horn, and which is treasured in a French museum. After elaborating that a little I passed to the distemper portraits, six thousand years old, furnished us by an Egyptian cemetery; then to the figures carved at a later date upon the monoliths and tombs of Egypt; then said, with enthusiasm “How felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who reached his home at two o’clock in the morning and his wife said plaintively ‘Oh John, when you’ve had whiskyⒶtextual note enough why don’t you ask for sarsaparilla?’—and he said ‘Why, Maria, when I have had whiskyⒶtextual note enough I can’t say Ⓐtextual note sarsaparilla.’ ”

I did not wait for the full results, but plunged into my speech again and brought it along down, step by step, enlarging upon the results of the several stages, and when I got to Daguerre’s monumental inventionⒺexplanatory note I discoursed upon it with a violence of enthusiasm that was startling to hear—notwithstanding it was about destitute of sense and coherence—then had one of those sudden inspirations, and exclaimed with feeling,Ⓐtextual note

“How felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who arrived at his house at that usual unfortunate hour in the super-early morning, and stood there and watched his portico rising and sinking and swaying and reeling, and at last, when it swung around into his neighborhood he made a plunge and scrambled up the steps and got safely ontoⒶtextual note the portico, stood there watching his dim house rise and fall and swing and sway, until the front door came his way and he made a plunge [begin page 187] and got in, andⒶtextual note scrambled up the long flight of stairs, but at the topmost step instead of planting his foot upon it he only caught it with his toe, and down he tumbled, and rolled and thundered all the way down the stairs, fetched up in a sitting posture on the bottom step with his arm braced around the friendly newel-post and said ‘God pity the poor sailors out at sea on such a night as this.’ ”

Then I went warblingⒶtextual note along on my portrait painting and presently introduced my third and finest anecdote, using the same set form of introduction as before, and sat down triumphant, my great system proved and established.

But sorrow followed, and disaster. The first man called upon to speak was the brand-newⒶtextual note district attorney, a man glib enough before judges and juries, but itⒶtextual note was mainly a literary crowd that he was confronting now,Ⓐtextual note and he showed timidity. He talked along hesitatingly, uncomfortably, unhappily; and presently it was plain that he was trying to lead up to an anecdote and didn’t know how to manage it. Then the house broke out, from one end to the other, with encouragements. They said,Ⓐtextual note

“Fetch it out! fetchⒶtextual note it out!Ⓐtextual note How felicitously what you have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who—　Let her fly!”Ⓐtextual note

He tried to work up to his anecdote, but the encouragements always broke out in time to scare him and shut him off, so he never got to his anecdote at all. He surrendered, and sat down.

The same thing happened to the next man, the new postmaster of Brooklyn. He struggled manfully along and approached his anecdote from four or five different directions, but always the house helped him along so enthusiastically that they frightened him off and he never reached his goal. He sat down defeated. Five other men were called upon, in turn, and each in turn declined to take a chance in that insurrection. Finally General Horace PorterⒺexplanatory note was called up, and he got away with the honors of the evening. Let the house encourage and storm as they would, he stood to his guns,Ⓐtextual note serene and unafraid. He told seven anecdotes, and introduced every one of them with the proper formula—“How felicitously,” etc.

At Bar Harbor we invited half a dozen charming young ladies and as many charming young gentlemen to come aboard and take luncheon with us. On the evening preceding the luncheon our young people discussed the matter, on the quarter-deck aft, and devised ways and means to make the luncheon go off in a lively way. My ancient oratorical scheme came into my head and we concluded to try it. Next day, at the end of the luncheon, I got up and asked for a text, and those young rascals invited me to talk upon “Marriage Engagements.” I recognized the villainy of it, for there were two engaged couples present, but I had to stick to my contract, and I did it.

It was plenty good enough fun—at least it was good enough fun for the others, though the couples and I could have enjoyed another text more. However, I took it out of one of the criminals—a lovely young creature who sat at my right, and with whom I was upon terms which permitted a considerable degree of latitude. I said that I hoped to have the young gentlemen in my oratorical class, and that I also had a scheme of instruction in a beautiful and neglected art which I hoped would appeal to the young ladies and persuade [begin page 188] them to make up a class for me and cultivate their powers in that gracious art. I said that my scheme was to teach what I called the Classified BlushⒶtextual note—the Graduated BlushⒶtextual note. I said that there was hardly a young lady in the land who knew how to blush in anything like an expert way—they blushed carelesslyⒶtextual note, ignorantly, thoughtlessly; they over-blushed, they under-blushed; they seldom exhibited a blush which was exactly proportioned to the dimensions of the compliment which called it forth. I was sure that after a young lady had taken a dozen lessons from me she could blush accurately every time; that she would cease from furnishing a mild and almost colorless No. 1 blush when the compliment was of so handsome a nature that it properly called for a No.Ⓐtextual note 6, or possibly a rich and radiant and crimson No. 14. I said,Ⓐtextual note

“Now here at my side sits a young lady to whom I have given nineteen lessons, and I will prove to you that she is an expert. When I call for a No. 1 she’ll not make the mistake of furnishing a No. 4, which would be overdoing it. When I call for No. 10, No. 14, and so on, you will see the exactly proper and requisite sunset-flushⒶtextual note rise in these beautiful cheeks—there, just that casual littleⒶtextual note remark, you see, brings a No. 2. Now if you will look into her lovely blue eyes, if you will examine her charming features, her satin skin, her tawny hair, the fine intelligence which beams in her face—there now, look at that! Here where I touch her cheek with my finger an inch in front of her dainty ear,Ⓐtextual note is the meridianⒶtextual note which marks the degrees reaching from 1 to 5. See the color steal toward 5. Now it crosses it. Keep your eye on it.Ⓐtextual note I move my finger forward toward her delicate nostril—Ⓐtextual notesee the rich bloodⒶtextual note followⒶtextual note it!Ⓐtextual note When I tell you that hers is the loveliest form, the loveliest spirit that perhaps exists in the world to-day,Ⓐtextual note that she is a darling of the darlings——but I need go no further. The blush has reached her nostril and her collar, and is a No. 16Ⓐtextual note—the most engaging blush, the most charming blush, the most beautiful blush that can adorn the face of any earthly angel, save and except No. 31, which is the last and final possibility, and is called the ‘San Francisco,Ⓐtextual note or the Combined Earthquake and Conflagration.’Ⓐtextual note I will now produce that blush.”

But I didn’t. It isn’t right, and it isn’t fair to carry vengeance too far. It seemed to me that that little witch and I were about even, and so I elected toⒶtextual note be just and stand pat.