Chapter IV (3)

Walt Whitman’s Camden home seemed to be a Mecca for the litterateurs of Europe who visited this country. Both Matthew Arnold and Sir Edwin Arnold visited him there, and a number of other distinguished men as well. It was during Sir Edwin Arnold’s last visit to New York that he suggested he would like to call on Walt Whitman again. He and I went to Philadelphia together, and, with John Russell Young, took a carriage at the Lafayette Hotel about noon and drove to his Camden home. Whitman, who of course knew of Sir Edwin Arnold, and he seemed cheered and pleased by the attention. I had planned the visit the night before by telegraph to Mr. Young, saying that we would surprise Walt. He had no intimation of our coming until we arrived.

The aged poet sat in his bedroom. He was wrapped in a big blanket, upon which his gray beard, that of a typical sage, flowed. The floor was littered with books and papers, almost blocking our approach. Sir Edwin Arnold managed to wade through the literary débris, and stood in the full light of the window before his host.

An inexpressible flood of delight passed over the face of the American poet as he beheld his great English confrère. Sir Edwin rushed toward him and exclaimed, “My dear friend, I am delighted to see you.”

“Arnold, I did not expect you; how kind and considerate!” was the surprised exclamation of the aged poet as he held out his hand. But there was more than the usual hand-shaking. The greeting was a literal embrace, for the two poets loved each other in the strictest literary sense. Sir Edwin had always been infatuated with Walt Whitman’s poetry, and the American bard found equal delight in the productions of the former. It was the second time that the two had met. Sir Edwin Arnold’s visit to this country in 1892 was made expressly to see Walt Whitman.

After the two poets had embraced, Walt Whitman received John Russell Young and me with an effusive greeting.

For the next hour and a half the talk ran fast and without intermission. Walt had much to tell, and so had Sir Edwin; it was a shower of literary epigrams. Sir Edwin was very sorry that his friend was not in the best of health.

“If I had hold of you,” said Sir Edwin, pointing his finger affectionately, “I’d soon get you well. You are not sick; why, if I could only have you, I wager that I could make you young again. Seventy-three years--that’s not much. You’re certainly good for fifteen years more, and during that time you can keep me delighted with books of new verse.”

“Oh, what beautiful things you say of me,” responded Walt; “and Arnold, how can I repay you for that splendid little tribute to me at the Lotos Club? You don’t know how it pleased me. It stirs the cockles of my blood to read the nice things you say of me.”

The two sat alongside of each other and began talking about American and English poetry.

“Arnold, we’re a lively, hustling people,” said the American bard, “and we’re too practical yet to appreciate the full sentiment of our verse. What a wealth has been written! Yes, we have not the high poetical spirit of the Japanese in this country. Over there in Japan there is so much sentiment--so much that is ideal.”

Sir Edwin said he hoped that the day would not be far distant when the people of America would have a very soft poetical glow to their temperament. “Americans,” said he, “are a great people, of remarkable intellect. What a future they have!”

Sir Edwin and his host next fell to musing over the great men of the country. They talked about Washington, Lincoln, and Grant, whose characters and deeds Sir Edwin avowed he was always fond of reading about. Then the pair had a literary treat by talking of Emerson, Longfellow, and other American poets. Each quoted many selections. Sir Edwin then asked Whitman if he should not recite from memory some of the latter’s gems.

“Have you some of my poetry in your memory?” exclaimed the aged poet.

“Well, I will guarantee to be able to recite at least half of what you have written,” replied Sir Edwin playfully.

“Now let me try you.”

Sir Edwin then stood up when he was asked to recite a portion of Walt Whitman’s verse on the death of Lincoln. The famous English bard’s eyes twinkled, and he began:

“Come early and soothing Death.
Undulate round the world, severely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate death.”

Sir Edwin kept on reciting until tears filled the eyes of the American poet and he reached forth his hand thankfully. Sir Edwin recited several more selections, and then his host repeated many lines from Sir Edwin’s works.

Before the party arose to take their departure, Walt Whitman had three volumes brought to him by a servant. Each volume was very large, and contained all of his productions in verse and prose. He jotted down his autograph on each, and as he handed them to his guests he spoke like a playmate to his companions: “I won’t say that I will write to you fellows; it’s all inside the book.”

“God bless you and keep you safe and well!” responded Sir Edwin, and the visit came to an end.

Sir Edwin spoke thus of Walt Whitman: “Great, good poet that he is, he stands next to Emerson.”

WALT WHITMAN.

Gone has the savor from the salt
With Walt.
An untamed stallion, strong and sure,
He galloped through our literature;
No critic trainer had the grit
To tame him to the bridle bit,
No rein his headlong speed could halt,
Unharnessed Walt.

A man of many a flaw and fault
Was Walt.
He never tried to train his thought
To blossom in a flower pot;
With careless hand he flung his seeds,
And some grew roses, some grew weeds,
And some rich flowers of purple blood
Sprung from the mud.

O’er custom’s fence, with easy vault,
Leaped Walt.
The pedant’s gown he would not don,
Nor hold his pen with handcuffs on.
His rhythm, like a fetterless sea,
Broke in mad music and débris
Against the bowlders of his age
With giant rage.

We shall not find ’neath heaven’s vault
Another Walt.
He gave a gift beyond all pelf,
Man’s greatest gift--he gave himself.
Then bear, with dead hands on his breast,
This shaggy old man to his rest.
A strong, audacious soul has fled,
Now Walt is dead.
--SAM WALTER FOSS.

Dr. A. Conan Doyle came to this country in October, 1894, and gave forty public readings. Had it not been for his invalid wife, with whom he had promised to spend Christmas, he could have continued during the season and returned home with a small fortune in American dollars.

There was something about his personality that attracted people, and still he was not what I would say the most satisfactory reader of his writings. There was something about him that fairly charmed his audiences, and many of his great admirers were seriously disappointed when they found that as soon as the lecture was over the Doctor had made his escape from the stage door, so that those friends who had rushed to meet him and congratulate him could not do so.

I remember that I made a promise to a group of very prominent New York ladies, who had made a special request to meet the Doctor after his reading, that they could have the privilege of being introduced to him. While in the wings as he was stepping on the stage I told the Doctor what I had done and asked him to please wait and meet them. He replied: “Oh, Major, I cannot, I cannot. What do they want of me? Let me get away. I haven’t the courage to look anybody in the face.” He was a pessimist in regard to the satisfactoriness of his entertainment.

He is a gentleman with very hot blood. He seldom wears an overcoat, even in the coldest weather. He seemed to like everybody he met and everything he saw in America excepting our heated hotel lobbies, public halls, and railway cars. When he had a matinée lecture he removed his vest and buttoned his Prince Albert coat close to his body. This he could not very well do in his evening dress.

Dr. Doyle comes of a family of artists and literary men, his grandfather having been a famous caricaturist, and one of his uncles the famous Richard Doyle of the early days of London _Punch_, and another, James Doyle, the historian. He studied medicine, and at nineteen went to the Arctic regions as medical officer to a whaler. On his return to Edinburgh he continued his medical studies and there met Dr. James Bell, the eminent surgeon, the man who suggested “Sherlock Holmes,” his most famous character.

Like most literary men, he makes few close friends. He is a golf fiend, and will spend all the time possible, cold, wet, rain or shine, on the links. He is an ideal travelling companion.

I think that Dr. Doyle was tendered more honors from clubs and societies generally than any other Englishman I have known, hundreds of which he was obliged to decline. He was one of the most appreciative Englishmen that ever came to this country. American institutions and American customs did not seem to cause unkind remark or to surprise him as they have many others. He was a great favorite with the newspaper men, and they were always ready and willing to say nice things of him.

As for his impression of America generally, I don’t know that I can do better than to give his own story as he told it at a dinner given in his honor by the Lotos Club, New York, on the 17th of November, just before his return home.

Two hundred members and guests of the Lotos Club gathered to greet him. President Lawrence made a highly flattering address of welcome, and, when he presented Dr. Doyle, the latter was blushing at the kind things said of him. He began by saying:

“There was a time in my life which I divided among my patients and literature. It is hard to say which suffered most. But during that time I longed to travel as only a man to whom travel is impossible does long for it, and most of all I longed to travel in the United States. Since this was impossible, I contented myself with reading a good deal about them, and building up an ideal United States in my own imagination. This is notoriously a dangerous thing to do. I have come to the United States, I have travelled from five to six thousand miles through them, and I find that my ideal picture is not to be whittled down, but to be enlarged on every side. I have heard even Americans say that life is too prosaic over here. That romance is wanting. I do not know what they mean. Romance is the very air they breathe. You are hedged in with romance on every side. I can take a morning train in this city of New York, I can pass up the historic and beautiful Hudson, I can dine at Schenectady where the Huron and the Canadian did such bloody work, and before evening I have found myself in the Adirondack forests, where the bear and the panther are still to be shot, and where within four generations the Indian and the frontiersman still fought for the mastery. With a rifle and a canoe you can glide into one of the back eddies which has been left by the stream of civilization. I feel keenly the romance of Europe. I love the memories of the shattered castle and the crumbling abbey; of the steel-clad knight and the archer; but to me the romance of the red-skin and the trapper is more vivid, as being more recent. It is so piquant also to stay in a comfortable inn, where you can have your hair dressed by a barber, at the same place where a century ago you might have been left with no hair to dress.

“Then there is the romance of this very city. On the first day of my arrival, I inquired for the highest building and I ascended it in an elevator--at least they assured me it was an elevator. I thought at first that I had wandered into the dynamite gun. If a man can look down from that point, upon the noble bridge, upon the two rivers crowded with shipping, and upon the magnificent city with its thousand evidences of energy and prosperity, and can afterward find nothing better than a sneer to carry back with him across the ocean, he ought to consult a doctor. His heart must be too hard or his head too soft. And no less wonderful to me are those Western cities, which, without any period of development, seem to spring straight into a full growth of every modern convenience, but where, even among the rush of cable cars and the ringing of telephone bells, one seems still to catch the echoes of the woodsman’s axe and of the scout’s rifle. These things are the romance of America, the romance of change, of contrast, of danger met and difficulty overcome; and let me say that we, your kinsmen upon the other side, exult in your success and in your prosperity, and it is those who know British feeling, true British feeling best, who will best understand how true are my words. I hope you don’t think I say this, or that I express my admiration for your country, merely because I am addressing an American audience. Those who know me better on the other side will exonerate me from so unworthy a motive. It is a subject upon which I feel deeply. I am aware that the division of opinion among us at the time of your civil troubles has been taken to mean lack of sympathy with you. Far from being so, it was exactly the contrary. Our sympathies are so close and vital that when you are rent in two we are rent in two, and with a bitterness and completeness which was the counterpart of your own. So it would be to-morrow, and when it ceases to be, it will be a proof that we have finally lost touch with you. It is only when a great American or an Englishman dies, when a mighty voice is hushed forever, a Tennyson, a Lowell, or a Holmes, that a thrill through both countries tells of that deep-lying race feeling in the development of which lies, I believe, the future history of the world. Little waves and eddies may disturb the surface, but there is an unseen current there a thousand fathoms deep, which sweeps us onward to the same goal. And the proudest thought of a literary man is that he, too, in his infinitesimal way, is one of the forces which make for unity of feeling amongst the English-speaking races, and for that ‘peace and good will to all men’ which such a unity of feeling would entail.

“Gentlemen, I thank you once more for your great kindness to me.”

President Seth Low of Columbia University, Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, W. Bourke Cockran, David Christie Murray, Bartow S. Weeks, and William H. McElroy also spoke.

The menu had in its upper right-hand corner a portrait of Dr. Doyle, and on its border characters and scenes from his novels.

The night before Dr. Doyle sailed for England, Friday, December 6, 1894, the Aldine Club gave him a farewell dinner. Hamilton W. Mabie presided and introduced the guest of the evening, who had just arrived from Boston. It was a literary crowd of our choicest men of letters. Dr. Doyle seemed to have no set speech, but prefaced his reply to Mabie with an account of his arrival in Boston:

“I arrived in Boston and alighted from the train almost into the arms of a dozen cabbies. One of them had a dog-eared book peeping out of his pocket, and I instinctively called him, saying as I got in: ‘You may drive me to Young’s, or Parker’s--perhaps.’

“‘Pardon me,’ said the cabbie, ‘I think you’ll find Major Pond waiting for you at Parker’s, sir.’

“What could I do but stare and acquiesce by taking my seat speechlessly? We arrived, and the observant cabman was at the door. I started to pay my fare when he said, quite respectfully:

“‘If it is not too great an intrusion, sir, I should greatly prefer a ticket to your lecture. If you have none of the printed ones with you, your agent would doubtless honor one of your visiting-cards, if pencilled by yourself.’

“I had to be gruff or laugh outright, and so said:

“‘Come, come, I am not accustomed to be beaten at my own tricks. Tell me how you ascertained who I am, and you shall have tickets for your whole family, and such cigars as you smoke here in America, besides.’

“‘Of course we all knew that you were coming on this train--that is, all of the members of the Cabmen’s Literary Guild,’ was the half-apologetic reply. ‘As it happens, I am the only member on duty at this station this morning, and I had that advantage. If you will excuse other personal remarks, your coat lapels are badly twisted downward, where they have been grasped by the pertinacious New York reporters. Your hair has the Quakerish cut of a Philadelphia barber, and your hat, battered at the brim in front, shows where you have tightly grasped it, in the struggle to stand your ground at a Chicago literary luncheon. Your right overshoe has a large block of Buffalo mud just under the instep, the odor of a Utica cigar hangs about your clothing, and the overcoat itself shows the slovenly brushing of the porters of the through sleepers from Albany. The crumbs of doughnut on the top of your bag--pardon me, your luggage--could only have come there in Springfield, and stencilled upon the very end of the “Wellington,” in fairly plain lettering, is the name, “Conan Doyle.”

“Now I know where Sherlock Holmes went when he died. That leaves me free to write any more adventures of his that I wish as long as I locate them in Boston.”

Dr. Doyle heard some fine speeches that evening after he had finished. Bill Nye was the first to follow him; then Edward Eggleston, Thomas Nelson Page, Charles Dudley Warner, F. Hopkinson Smith, James Lane Allen, and others; but the intellectual part of the feast was listening to Dr. Doyle’s story-telling. He has a brilliant capacity for telling a true story with absolute correctness of historical detail and with anything but historical dulness.

After Dr. Doyle returned to his home he was, of course, obliged to say something of the impressions left by his visit. Among other things that he said, he made a remark to the effect that an English author should come here with the primary purpose of seeing the country and not of making money. This was immediately seized upon as a hint that his own tour had not paid. The following letter put that idea at rest:

* * * * *

“TO THE EDITORS OF “THE CRITIC,” NEW YORK:

“I notice that you allude to my recent lecturing tour in America as though it had been unsuccessful. In justice to my most able manager, Major J. B. Pond, will you allow me to say that it was successful beyond all possible expectation, that I had crowded houses nearly everywhere, and that I could have easily doubled the list of my engagements? My remarks about American lecturing were impersonal, and I repeat that an English author should go there with the primary idea of seeing the country and the people, and that the making of money should be a secondary one.”

A. CONAN DOYLE. “MALOJA, SWITZERLAND, Sept. 2, 1895.”

* * * * *

The warm feeling of friendship he felt toward America and the American people is well illustrated by the following letter which he wrote me some time after his American tour:

* * * * *

“UNDERSHAW, HINDHEAD, HASLEMERE.

NIND “MY DEAR MAJOR:

“It was quite a pleasure to me to see your handwriting again. I shall always regret that I did not see you when you came to London. Pray give my kindest remembrances to Mrs. Pond and the little man. You will, I am sure, be glad to hear that my wife’s health has much improved.

“Has not the Anglo-American _entente cordiale_ which I preached when I was in the States grown since 1894? It is the best and healthiest sign in the waning century. But we have much still to do.

Yours always, “A. CONAN DOYLE.”

* * * * *

I would give him more money to-day than any Englishman I know of if he would return for a hundred nights.

He must be a great disappointment to his old teacher. When he had finished school the teacher called the boy up before him and said solemnly:

“Doyle, I have known you now for seven years, and I know you thoroughly. I am going to say something which you will remember in after-life. Doyle, you will never come to any good.”

Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras, when he first appeared made a great sensation, and it was believed that a second Byron had been added to the list of our poets. He was born in Indiana, but was taken to Oregon when a mere infant. He spent part of his boyhood with a tribe of Indians, and there took the name of a well-known highwayman or “road agent.” It was a mere caprice on the boy’s part, but the name stuck to him and he stuck to the name. After leaving the Indians he went to the mines, and his life there is described in his novel “The Danites,” which furnished the plot and character for his play of the same name. He soon tired of digging for gold, and established an express, which consisted of a few teams that took and brought parcels from the mining camp to the nearest town. Then he took to law, practised before the territorial courts, and subsequently was elected a judge. Of course he contributed to the territorial newspapers--everybody did who had any talent for writing; but unlike most frontier writers his contributions soon attracted notice outside of the Territory, and he soon found himself famous. That made it certain in those days that he would be invited to lecture. He did lecture a few times in California, and then came East, but proceeded to London before attempting to lecture in New England. He found himself unknown in London, and adopted a very original scheme for becoming known. He issued an edition of his poems of the Sierras--just enough to send to the leading newspapers. He instantly became famous, and was courted by “society.” He accepted numerous invitations to parties in high life, and went to splendid aristocratic residences clad in red shirt, slouch hat, and with his trousers tucked into his boots. He wore his hair long and exaggerated the manners of the far West. The result was to make him the lion of the season. He reaped a rich harvest from fabulous fees for readings from his Western poems, and relating incidents of his adventures in the Rocky Mountains. When he returned to the United States he lectured a little, but did not make a hit, and he soon returned to the coast, and has since depended almost solely on his pen for a living.

Later he went to the Klondike, and after his return lectured in the States on his experiences there; but his former friends were not around, and the present public did not know him, so his venture was a failure.

Alexander Black is guilty of a new invention for drawing audiences. He wrote the story of “Miss Jerry,” and not being in a position to engage a company to produce it throughout the country, induced a number of excellent actors to give the play in costume, and while it was being acted photographed every scene and incident. Then he developed the pictures, put them on lantern slides, and with the stereopticon reproduces the play in every respect but the speaking, which Mr. Black does himself. This stroke of genius is making Mr. Black rich, as well as surprising the public with an absolute novelty.

He has since produced two other picture plays. In “The Capital Courtship” the scene is laid in Washington, and the characters in the play call on the President in his office and in his parlors at the White House. They also visit many of the cabinet ministers, all of whom must have consented to pose specially for these illustrations. So great has been Mr. Black’s success with the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences that the manager of that institution, Mr. Franklin W. Hooper, paid him $300 for his initial performance of “The Capital Courtship,” and wrote me that this picture play of Mr. Black’s had brought many thousands of dollars to the institute.

The third year Mr. Black produced another play, “Miss America,” which has met with equal success. There is hardly an established lyceum in the United States where he has not appeared, and what is particularly interesting in these times is that Mr. Black is recalled more than any other stereopticon entertainer.

He was originally a journalist, and retired from that calling to become a showman. He spends his summers in preparing some new scheme for the edification and instruction of his myriads of friends throughout the length and breadth of the land. As I am not Mr. Black’s manager, it can be seen that I pay him this tribute disinterestedly.

Ernest Seton-Thompson is a practical demonstration of what I have ever declared: that there always has been and always will be some one coming to the front whom the general public wants to see and hear. That somebody must do something good enough to attract general attention and render an equivalent return for what the patrons will give.

The name of Seton-Thompson had been on my list for a season. He frequently called at my office and gave me newspaper notices, and told me of the pleasant things that had been said to him where he had given lectures for small Lyceums at a moderate fee. He presented me with a copy of his book, “Wild Animals I have Known,” which interested me immensely, and I was satisfied that he was not lecturing or reading for revenue only, but that he had a cause, was fond of animals, that his life had been associated with them, and that he showed clearly that every living creature had paternal and family instincts the same as human beings.

I asked him if he would give a lecture in Jersey City, near my home, so that I could hear it, which he consented to do. I then discovered that he was certainly a big attraction. I had booked him with a kindergarten society of New York for a lecture at Carnegie Lyceum, which I attended. Although I went early, I found the box office crowded with women and children trying to secure admission; but the man in the office had no more tickets to sell. The young lady who had charge of the affair came to me in great tribulation; there were a lot of people who wished to get in, and all the tickets she had put out among her friends had been sold and she didn’t know what to do. I hurried to the box office and asked the ticket agent to sell the people something that would admit them to the place, charging a dollar each, and I told the young lady to let everybody in and secure all the money she could. The result was about $160 more than the original sale of tickets that had been counted upon.

Then I suggested to Ernest Seton-Thompson that he and I give lectures in partnership in that hall as often as we could. I secured a number of dates,--I think eight in all,--the first one being one week from the afternoon just mentioned. I went to Carnegie Lyceum that afternoon and found every seat had been sold. The profits of the lecture were over $500. I asked Mr. Thompson if that wasn’t the largest day’s work he had ever done. He seemed very much flattered, and acknowledged that it was. We went from there to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore, giving afternoon and evening entertainments.

The matinées were arranged so as to take place after school hours, generally from 4:30 to 5. These were invariably the largest attended. It was surprising to find the number of children who had read Mr. Seton-Thompson’s book and how familiar they all were with the names of Lobo, Wahb, Mollie Cottontail, Blanca, Silver Spot, Vixen and Tip, The Wild Mustang, and especially Little Johnny. The appearance of any one of them on the screen was the signal for shouts of laughter from the children. Lobo and Little Johnny seemed to please them the most.

No man has risen more rapidly in public favor than Mr. Seton-Thompson, as regards both his writings and his lecturing. At the present time there are more engagements booked for him at high prices than for any other platform attraction in the country.

Mr. Seton-Thompson demonstrated that the hunting of wild animals with a camera, instead of with a rifle to destroy their lives, is fully as enjoyable, and possesses much more satisfactory final results. He has also taught us that the animals instinctively avoid man because they are being hunted for their lives; but in communities where the shooting of animals is prohibited, the creatures become tame and almost sociable. In the Yellowstone Park, where no firing is allowed or has been for years, the bears and the wolves, the cattle and the horses, and the children, mingle together undisturbed, and children, colts, wolves, and lambs are as safe as though in their natural homes.

Mr. Seton-Thompson is a delightful man personally. Children have no hesitancy in approaching him or writing to him. He has received thousands of letters from children in all parts of the land telling him how they have enjoyed his books, and of the animals they have known that he must have heard of, or he could not have given their characters so graphically. The most interesting reading that I have found for a long time is among Mr. Seton Thompson’s letters from children. Here is one:

* * * * *

“August 6, 1899, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

“MY DEAR MR. ----

“‘Wild Animals I have Known’ is the best and truest book I know. I have read it twice, each time feeling its trueness more and more. In the simple way the book is written it helps you to understand the delicate and finer parts of animal and bird life.

“The book appeals to you because it is true and just in all it says. I think it keen in detail, liberal and fair to every creature in it, beautiful in its style. The style that fascinates you yet not a novelist’s fascination. Original in every way and no quoting or phrases of other men, but just the Author’s own original and simple words, and on the whole it is a fine book that couldent be matched in beauty and style. The Author must lead a beautiful life in the woods and on the plains and in animals resting places, feeling at home with them and learning their ways, and I guess we all thank him for his toil and labor to compleat such a fine book. I like the Pacing Mustang and his glorious gate, as everlasting as steel. Bingo and lots of other stories. The Don Valley Partridge in which Mr. Thompson speaks of the cruel hunter who hunted Redruff. I had a simeler experience but not a brutal one for it turned out all right. My, Uncle, a boy friend of mine, and myself with our rifels and a pistol, (we were with a party of others going for a ducking in Eel River) we three were ahead, and just as we turned a curve we saw a Father quail with six or seven young ones, we were all seized with an impulse to shoot him although it was out of season. I shot between his toes, then my uncle shot and it kept it hot. I shot twice again but all the time my friend was shooting and the dust was flying, there the quails stood untouched, and unmoved he waited till all the young were hid and then he hid himself. It was about five minutes that we had been shooting. I stopped and thought of Mr. Thompson’s book. I tried to stop the others, and I did. When we left the spot there was one boy ashamed of his shooting, a man glad he dident kill the quaile, but ashamed of his shooting, and last of all I with a wreath of happiness round my head and glad I didn’t kill the biped. Mr. Thompson saved his life (The quail’s) by writing that fine book of his, and he made me happy the rest of the day, and put the cruel hunting spirite out of my head.

“Hoping Mr. Thompson will write many more books,

“I am yours sincerely, “A---- W----.” (Twelve years old.)

* * * * *

It is surprising to learn, within two or three months after Mr. Seton-Thompson’s success, how many people have been interested in the same way, and are ready to make sacrifices by writing books and lecturing on wild animals.

He is a benefactor and has a cause. Fame and fortune are assured to him, which he justly deserves.

At present writing Mr. Seton-Thompson is speaking twice a day in order to comply with the demand for his services. Everywhere crowded houses welcome him, and always on afternoon occasions the greater portion of the audience is composed of children. The whole human family is his public, because every human being loves wild animals; the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, are alike interested and enthusiastic auditors.

All of Mr. Seton-Thompson’s writings and drawings descriptive of the personality of wild animals are enhanced many fold by his inimitable description of them from his own lips. It is seldom that an author-artist is gifted with the ability to entertain upon the lecture platform, but Mr. Ernest Seton-Thompson is as clever with his voice as with his pen and pencil.

William Henry Drummond, D.D., author of “De Habitant” and other French-Canadian poems, has lived virtually all his life with the French-Canadian people, and while most of the English-speaking public know the French-Canadians of the cities, they have had little opportunity of knowing the habitant as does the doctor. He knows them, and they know and love him so well that he allows them to tell their tales in their own way as they would relate them to English-speaking auditors not conversant with the French tongue.

As James Whitcomb Riley’s Hoosier dialect poems have charmed the American people, so have Dr. Drummond’s won the hearts of the Canadians. He reads as charmingly as he writes.

For the sake of those who are not familiar with his work, I quote (by permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons) a few verses from his poem, “De Habitant.”

“De place I get born me, is up on de reever
Near foot of de rapide dat’s call Cheval Blanc,
Beeg mountain behin’ it, so high you can’t climb it,
An’ whole place she’s mebbe two honder arpent.

“De fader of me, he was habitant farmer,
Ma gran’fader too, an’ hees fader also,
Dey don’t mak’ no monee, but dat isn’t fonny,
For it’s not easy get ev’ryt’ing, you mus’ know--

“All de sam’ dere is somet’ing dey got ev’rybody,
Dat’s plaintee good healt’, wat de monee can’t geev,
So I’m workin’ away dere, an’ happy for stay dere
On farm by de reever, so long I was leev.”

“O! dat was de place w’en de spring tam she’s comin’,
W’en snow go away an’ de sky is all blue--
W’en ice lef’ de water, an’ sun is get hotter,
An’ back on de medder is sing de gon-glou--

“W’en small sheep is firs’ comin’ out on de pasture,
Deir nice leetle tail stickin’ up on deir back,
Dey ronne wit’ deir moder, an’ play wit’ each oder,
An’ jomp all de tam jus’ de sam’ dey was crack.”

_Tho Nelson Page_ ]

Thomas Nelson Page has been the most successful of the Southern authors who have read from their own writings. He has done more to preserve the traditions of the old South, the old negro character, and the interior home life before the war, than any one else. I wish that I were able to write well enough to say what I would like to of this Southern gentleman of letters. He seems to convey all that is best in a character, whether master or slave, and in such a way that every one who reads his charming descriptive novels is made familiar with life in the South as it actually was before the war.

Shortly after “Marse Chan” made its appearance, I received letters from all parts of the country asking if Thomas Nelson Page, the author of that story, could be secured to give readings. It was some time before I obtained a favorable reply to my many invitations for him to let himself be seen as well as read. He was very shy and quite averse to making an exhibition of himself, claiming that he was not gifted with voice or histrionic ability. He did consent to give joint readings with F. Hopkinson Smith for a short tour, beginning in Boston, January 12, 1892, in cosy little Chickering Hall. I had hoped for a big success financially, but the fame of the two Southern authors had not preceded them at the Hub. They opened with a small audience; but the newspapers gave excellent reports the following day, which assured success for the balance of the season. A Boston success means a success in New England, but I had struck high for large cities. We went to Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington. The readings were attended by the choicest literary public in each city. Return engagements were made invariably, which were very remunerative, and there was a good deal of money in sight. Mr. Page was paving the way for a magnificent success another season, as was evident from the number of applications that came from every city where he had appeared.

Unfortunately, that season I made one engagement too many in Chicago, for from there I received notice from Mr. Page that he would not give another season to the platform under any conditions. Very shortly afterward I learned that in Chicago he had made the acquaintance of one of the most charming ladies in that city, who seemed to have more influence over him than the alluring promises of lyceum readings. To make a long story short, Mr. Page changed his manager.

He is now living in Washington, and I am happy to say that I can count him as one of my best friends.

Three years ago I was a guest at a dinner at his house given to Anthony Hope, where were present the Hon. Lyman Gage, Secretary of the Treasury, Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and James Lane Allen and Mr. John Fox, Jr., the two famous Southern novelists of the time. One can imagine the charming intellectual atmosphere of an occasion like this; none present but that felt there must have been some fault in the reckoning of time, for it was 4 A.M. when the party reluctantly dissolved.

Mr. Page has a beautiful home in Washington, and I know of no one better fitted for such charming surroundings. He is as delightful as a host and in his everyday conversation as he is as a reader of his fascinating Southern stories. One can spend a day with Mr. Page in ordinary travel and conversation and attend his readings at night, and find that he has been as delightfully entertained in the ordinary speech as by the public reading. He has the sweetest-speaking voice that I ever heard. There is no music more delightful to listen to.

For one reason I am glad that I was deprived of his services as a star. Had he continued on the platform he never would have written “Red Rock,” a book which has met with an enormous sale and which gives the most graphic picture of the trials that the Southerners endured during and after the war. It is probably because I had been a soldier four years and had known nearly every character exactly as Mr. Page has presented it to the present generation and preserved it for posterity that I enjoyed it so much. Thomas Nelson Page certainly has not lived in vain.

Mr. John Fox, Jr., is a young friend of Mr. Page’s of whom I like to write. He is a Kentuckian, a Harvard man, lawyer, New York newspaper man, all-around athlete, and author of “The Cumberland Vendetta,” “Hell for Sartain,” and “The Kentuckians,” which have won him a position among the best writers of America and Europe.

In Thomas Nelson Page’s letter introducing Mr. Fox to me, he writes:

“Get John Fox some engagements. He is going to be a success, and some one else will secure him. Mr. Theodore Roosevelt was praising him to me the other night in a way to warm my heart.”

Mr. Fox is surely one of the most popular Southern authors of the time, and is very much appreciated in the South on account of his nativity as well as because of the high character of his literary work; but he has appeared before the most cultivated literary circles in all of the larger cities of the North, giving his dialect readings from his own sketches of life in the Cumberland Mountains. He discovered a dialect and lots of good in the humble people who inhabit that mountainous region, and who are the least known of any of the inhabitants of our country.

For the class he presents he is as thoroughly sympathetic as Thomas Nelson Page is for the old-time Virginia negro “uncles” and “aunties” he so charmingly describes. I do not know a more natural and, in a refined sense, unconventional man on the platform and before his audience than this handsome, well-bred, easy youngish gentleman from Bourbon County, Kentucky.

The Cumberland tableland, which is the scene of his stories, divides the Blue Ridge or Cumberland Mountains in East Tennessee from the “basin,” or central and western sections of that State, and runs, a rugged formation, into Southeast Kentucky. “Charles Egbert Craddock,” as Miss Murfree signs herself, has preceded John Fox in the same field, but the latter brought to his later task of dialect and character portraiture the physical sense of companionship from his ability to actualize in his own life the Cumberland mountaineer’s rugged out-of-door existence.

In my own wanderings as printer, soldier, and later lecture manager, I have often felt the variant charm of the many-sided life of our land. Often, too, have I wondered at men going abroad to find romance and striking character, when so much of it is to be readily seen at home. The Cumberland mountaineers, generally of non-slave-holding stock, hunters even more than farmers, strong Union men in days of need, as a rule, but intensely Southern, nevertheless, afford a field for the story-teller’s art which seems to me of the most interesting and unique character.

John Fox has won its secret and knows how to make others understand. He has a capital presence, a magnetic force and manner, and a most telling voice at his command. On the platform he is pretty much what he is off it, except that he is sensitively watchful of doing his work well. William Dean Howells declares that Fox brings a “fresh vision” and a “novel touch” in the seeing and presenting of his scenes and characters. If that is true of his books, it is more eminently so of his readings and lecture descriptions. He has no mannerisms and gives no evidence of effort. He simply tells and lives in the telling. What he gives is truly his own work. His dialect is perfect, but it is human and actual, not a mere caricature. The figures he gives are wholesome and clean, as is the man who presents them.

Rudyard Kipling and I have exchanged a number of letters, but up to the day before he was stricken with his late illness we had never met. After several attempts through his friends and publishers, members of the Century Co., to get an introduction to him, a common friend of the editorial staff said to me:

“Major, it’s no use; Kipling won’t see you.”

“What have I done?” I asked.

“Nothing,” replied my friend. “He says that he has been told that if he meets you he will go lecturing, and he doesn’t purpose to expose himself.”

And although his New York house was within a block of mine, he managed to keep out of my sight, much as I tried to meet him.

In 1895, while crossing the continent with Mark Twain on his lecture tour around the world, Mr. Kipling was often mentioned by Mark as the greatest “card” in the world, and I was urged to try to get him. “I am told he is the finest reader and interpreter of his own writings of all of us. Get him,” said Mark. So, on my return from Victoria, B. C., after having seen Mark and his wife and daughter sail out on the _Warrimoo_ for Australia, I determined to call on Mr. Kipling at his home in Vermont, hoping that, on Mark’s suggestion, I might capture him. I received no reply to my various telegrams that I would call on such a day, but I had determined to make the effort. Yet when I started from Montreal to Brattleboro my courage failed. I did not stop, but wrote Mr. Kipling immediately on my arrival in New York, and received the following reply:

* * * * *

“BRATTLEBORO, VT., Sept. 30, 1895.

“DEAR MR. POND:

“I am much obliged to you for your letter, but I can’t say that I can see my way to the ententement you propose. There is such a thing as paying one hundred and twenty-five cents for a dollar, and though I suppose there is money in the lecturing business, it seems to me that the bother, the fuss, the being at everybody’s beck and call, the night journeys, and so on, make it very dear. I’ve seen a few men who’ve lived through the fight, but they did not look happy. I might do it as soon as I had two mortgages on my house, a lien on the horses, and a bill of sale on the furniture, and writer’s cramp in both hands; but at present I’m busy and contented to go on with the regular writing business. You forget that I have already wandered over most of the States, and there isn’t enough money in sight to hire me to face again some of the hotels and some of the railway systems that I have met with. America is a great country, but she is not made for lecturing in. With renewed thanks for your very kind letter, believe me,

“Yours sincerely, “RUDYARD KIPLING.”

* * * * *

Later I sent a complete set of his books, with a request that he favor me with his autograph in each volume (about twenty books). He unpacked, signed, and repacked them, and here is what he wrote:

* * * * *

“DEAR MAJOR POND:

“Your order of the 22d instant has been filled, we trust to your satisfaction, and the stuff is returned herewith.

“We did not know that there would be such a mass of lumber to put through the mill; and we note also that your order covers at least two supplementary orders--(_a_) in the case of a young lady aged nineteen (not in original contract) and (_b_) an autograph work for which we have supplied one original hardwood case.

“Our mills are running full time at present, in spite of business depression; but we are very reluctant to turn away any job that offers under these circumstances, and making allowance for time consumed, sorting, packing, crating, and returning finished goods, we should esteem it a favor if you would see your way to forwarding an additional ten ($10) dollars to the _Tribune_ Fresh Air Fund.

“Very sincerely yours, “R. KIPLING & CO.”

(Autographs supplied on moderate terms; guaranteed sentiments to order. Verse a specialty. No discount for cash.)

* * * * *

MY “BENEFIT” EXPERIENCE.

I had never believed in benefits for managers, for it is generally looked upon as a sort of give-away--an acknowledgment of an impecunious condition, like the beggar who stands on the street holding out his hat or turning a little hand-organ, labelled with the sign, “I am blind”--and one’s friends are liable to cut an old comrade in the street, or pass by on the other side, as an after-effect of such an appeal to the public.

It had been a hard season, and some of my friends had reaped pretty fair profits and urged me to accept a complimentary benefit, tendering their services and assistance gratuitously. My friend Bill Nye visited the proprietors of Chickering Hall and obtained from them the free use of that edifice for the entertainment, and my printers went so far as to volunteer to furnish programmes, tickets, and such advertising material as I wished. The newspapers, however, didn’t open their advertising columns gratuitously, as that would have been an innovation and an instance unparalleled in that department of newspaperdom, but the editors were very generous with their puffs.

So it was suggested by my friends George W. Cable, Max O’Rell, Bill Nye, and James Whitcomb Riley that I accept a testimonial. It was arranged that George W. Cable should be introduced by his friend Roswell Smith, president of the Century Co.; that Max O’Rell should be introduced by his friend, Gen. Horace Porter; Bill Nye by Col. John A. Cockerell, editor of the New York _World_, and one of the finest editor-orators of the time; and James Whitcomb Riley was to be introduced by Dr. Edward Eggleston, the Hoosier novelist, author of “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” and “The Hoosier Schoolboy.” Each one of these introducers was considered an attraction in himself.

The occasion was well advertised, circulars were sent out, and I think I never had a more copious response by mail than I had at that time from my friends, all asking for one or two tickets--complimentary, of course.

The time arrived, and my old friends turned out in full force--the old free list. The expenses were about $200, and the receipts about $110. I pocketed my loss of $90, and have discouraged every suggestion of a “benefit” offered since that time.

The entertainment was delightful. No audience ever went out of Chickering Hall with more beaming countenances, and I had congratulations from all my friends. I was asked by one friend, who had paid for her ticket, if I contemplated a tour to Europe. I certainly could afford it after receiving such a rousing benefit!

In an appropriate speech, Mr. Roswell Smith introduced his friend George W. Cable as the most successful magazine writer of his time, and dwelt upon the good fortune his writings had brought to the Century Co., of which he had the honor to be known as president.

His speech brought a hearty round of applause to Mr. Cable, as he stepped forward and read “Posson Jone’,” his favorite Creole story.

Then Col. John Cockerell, in his characteristic eloquence, presented his pet humorist, Bill Nye, who had come from the West on his invitation and accepted a position on the editorial staff of the New York _World_, and whose writings had quadrupled the circulation of the Sunday edition of that paper. He was eloquent in his eulogistic introduction, and Nye caught the inspiration as he wabbled down to the front of the stage. Without uttering a word he had the audience convulsed for a long time, and when he did begin his story of how he earned his first dollar, the audience fairly bubbled over, while there was not the slightest ripple on the speaker’s round countenance. Nye was bald-headed all over, and more so when in front of an audience.

Then Edward Eggleston, the Hoosier novelist, introduced James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, with many happy turns on the term Hoosier and the Hoosier State. Roswell Smith was from Indiana, Nye was part Hoosier, and every one down on the programme was Indianian to some degree except possibly Max O’Rell, the French humorist.