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Miss Lyon came into the billiard room an hour ago, where I was busying myself in the freedom of a dressing-gown, in perfectingⒶtextual note myself in a new wonder-compelling shot which I discovered by accident last night—perfecting myself in it with the idea of playing it in a casual and indifferent way before Ashcroft when he comes to-night; also with the idea that when, after he has seen the shot executed, and shall proclaim that notwithstanding this successful execution of it, the shot is impossible and can never be made again; also, with the further intention on my part of assuring him that I have never seen the shot attempted until now, but that I believe I can achieve it again. So I was practisingⒶtextual note as I say, and when Miss Lyon came in I had made myself so capable in it that I could make it four times out of five, and was already entirely sure of astonishing Ashcroft this evening. We drifted into an incident of a few weeks ago, where I called at the private school in New York to see one of my little angel-fishes, Irene, and was refused permission to see her. The austere old virgin to whom the school belongs informing me it was against the rules for her young girls to receive visitors during school hours. My vanity was badly hurt, my dignity had been trampled under foot; I had been treated just like an ordinary human being, instead of as clay of the salt of the earth, and I could not endure it. I got a letter right away, as soon as I was back in Stormfield, from Irene, saying that her special teacher, Miss BrownⒺexplanatory note, was ashamed of the fact that I had been treated just as the rules required ordinary visitors to be treated, but if she had known it was I she would have dismissed her class immediately, and I could have had Irene into my taxicab and carted her off to her home.

This incident naturally brought up another. In ’93, when the charming Carey, the bright Carey, the lovely Carey, the incomparable Carey, was still with us in the land of the living, and was still occupying his long-time high post on the staff of the Century Magazine Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note, he came along the hall one day, that leads to the editorial rooms, and there in the dingy twilight he found a venerable and profoundly-revered and illustrious citizen of the United States waiting for admission. Carey’s banks overflowed, and he poured out a flood of apologies, and escorted that citizen at once to the editorial sanctum. Then he went to his own place, and sent for the boy. The boy conceded that the great citizen had been waiting there a good while; also, the boy defended himself quite competently by saying he had only obeyed the rule of the house. Carey stormed at him, and said:

“The rule of the house! A child ought to know, and if a child doesn’t know, then somebody ought to inform the child that there was never yet in the world a rule that can be or ought to be enforced upon all occasions. There must always come a time, in the life of any rule, when the occasion rises away above the rule, and automatically abolishes it. At these rare times the person in charge must remember that a part of his duty is to now exercise his discretion, and let the rule go.”

Meantime Carey had ranged three large lithograph portraits alongside each other—Washington, Lincoln and Shakspeare—and he said to the boy:

[begin page 302] “Now, impress these faces on your memory; burn them into your memory, so that they will stay there forever. Now then, if either of these gentlemen should ever call, and want to see the editor of this magazine, suspend the rule instantly, and take him to the sanctum.”

Further along in the conversation,Ⓐtextual note I remarked that while I was shaving this morning, I made another LotosⒶtextual note Club–Carnegie speech; that this one did not resemble the LotosⒶtextual note Club–Carnegie speech I made in the bath-tub four days ago; that when I get up to speak at that Carnegie dinner on the 17th of this month, I shall be sure to make a third speechⒺexplanatory note; that the third speech will bear little resemblance to its two predecessors, and will rank with them as a brass farthing ranks with a government bond in the matter of value. I enlarged upon the inspiration that is furnished by inanimate things: by friendly and sympathetic and uncritical bath-tubs and old familiar chairs and rugs,Ⓐtextual note and chests of drawers,Ⓐtextual note and the other voiceless objects that make one’s private quarters the homiest of homes, and the most inspiring audience any speaker ever faces. Yes, and it’s true. One doesn’t have to watch the chairs and things to see how his talk is being received; one doesn’t have to observe sharply and take account of that subtle devil, the atmosphereⒶtextual note of an audience; that atmosphere that invades the speaker’s soul and tells him without utterance or gesture that he is doing handsomely, or that he is making a failure.

This naturally reminded me of an incident of forty-three years ago, which remains vividly in my memory now, and has never suffered evenⒶtextual note the slightest shade of change from the night it happened until now. I was a brand-new lecturer, and timid. I was to lecture in San JoseⒺexplanatory note, fifty miles below San Francisco, and I arrived late. I hurried to my place on the platform, weak and quaking with trepidation. An audience had been sitting there an hour and a quarter, waiting for me. There was a scowl upon their faces that stretched from the stage to the doors, and darkened the place like a thundercloud. For the first time in my brief oratorical career, I was received in silence; there was not a hand-clapⒶtextual note, there was not a movement, there was not a gesture. I was sick, sick clear to the heart. I began—timidly of course—and of course that made matters worse, for timidity gains no friends in most company, especially among human beings who are ready to eat a person. Uttering jokes timidly is not a good way; there are no laughs, there are only sneers, and you can read the sneers as plainly as if they were written on those faces in large print.

My despairing eye went wandering around over that hostile house, and suddenly it fell upon, as it were, the sun flashing through a rift in a stormcloudⒶtextual note. Dear meⒶtextual note! the surprise of it, the welcome of it, the uplift, the inspiration! It was the dear sweet friendly face of a girl of about eighteen, and it was all alight with happy expectancy—altogether the most beautiful face I have ever seen, I suppose; a judgment which perhaps is a little tinged with prejudice. All my trepidation, all my distress, all my despair, all my discomfort, vanished away in an instant. I sailed breezily and comfortably away on myⒶtextual note theme as upon a summer sea. It was not a large place; the people wereⒶtextual note all packed together on the floor, in number about three hundred: that darling sat in the very centre of the place. I looked her straight in the eye, I made every remark straight to her and nobody else; it [begin page 303] was easy and friendly and unconventional as if we were holding a private talk in a private place; I broke her all up with my first remark, because under her inspiration the remark was made in a natural way; she let fly the care-free laugh of her blessed youth, and from that to the end we had a triumph together. I could hear continuously, constantly, a great outbreak of laughter, and sometimesⒶtextual note the applause, and I vaguely knew that it came from the audience; but I was not interested in it; I had but the one audience, that girl; to me the rest of the three hundred were outsiders and not concerned in this matter so far as I was concerned. I have never in my life had a more delightful evening, and yet my audience was as slender as I have described. It consisted of but one person, and that person a stranger. Well, it shows what a person can do when he is all by himself, just as when he is talking to sympathetic and uncritical furniture in the privacy of his bed-chamberⒶtextual note; his imagination has a freedom then and a wider spread of wingⒶtextual note than it can ever have before an audience of human beings. But next to furniture, for a splendid inspiration, give me that girl again!