SECOND COPY, 18^9. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap..l.s?il)pyright No.. X UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE PEOPLE I'VE SMILED WITH. m ,Sfi,ui.: i';?«si THE PEOPLE I'VE '^ SMILED WITH^ Recollections OF A Merry Little Life ^ m> ^ ^ ^ <» ^ ^y MARSHALL P. 14/ILDER 1899 THE WERNER COMPANY NEW YORK AKRON, OHIO CHICAGO T5 3t1 •^%^^^ 34735 Copyright 1886 By O. M. Dunham Copyright 1899 BY THE WERNER COMPANY T. P. I. S. w. WO COPIES H£C-lveo. 231899 j) ^/^^r DEDICATED TO MY SECOND MOTHER, THE AMERICAN PUBLIC. INTRODUCTORY. "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones." — Prov., chap, xvii., verse 22. In a world so filled with cankering care, ** blessings on him who invented sleep," as simple Sancho Panza says, and blessed be he who with merry quip beguiles tedious hours or causes one flower of merriment to bloom in the desert of selfishness and sor- row. When first I met Marshall P. Wilder, I was drawn toward him because of his magnetic smile and because of a sympathy for a merry lad who bore his little cross so patiently. I saw in him one who, from the hour that his bright eyes opened on his cradle, might well have railed at Nature ; one who, cheated of fair hours and fair gifts, might well have been the prey of misanthropy ; who might have taken Thersites for a model rather than Mer- cutio, and whose heart might well have been ii Introductory. filled with bitterness rather than the sunshine which makes cheerful the darkest days. To this brave and philosophical youth has been given the richest of dowers — the power to make others happy : " He is so full of pleasing anecdote, So rich, so poignant in his wit, Time vanishes before him as he speaks." In his soul no envy lurks. His heart is brim- ful of charity. His name is synonymous with mirth. He is a living illustration of how kindly the harsh world receives those who come to it smiling and bearing in their hands offerings of good-will. Where he has passed the flowers bloom not less brightly because his feet have touched. Children laugh and run to meet the messenger of Momus ; solemn men forget their ills ; hearts grow tender under the magic pathos of his voice, and in all homes he is as welcome as the minstrel of old with harp and song and story. He has written here a little book which is a reflex of his own happy, buoyant nature. It contains recollections of a life which has known no evil, and which, if it has not always been spent in sunshine, has reflected every Introductory. iii pleasant rainbow hue which has fallen upon it. As one who has smiled with him, I ask for this unpretentious book even more than its deserving, for I know that it is the offering of a grateful heart to a public whose kindness has been as cherishing as the dews which kiss the roses where shadows often rest. John A. Cockerill. New York, May, 1889. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE "Yours, Merrily," — How I Came to Smile. — Dame Nature out of Sorts, but she Relented. — What THE Old Lady Gave me. — How Others Came to Smile with me. — Smiling as a Business, and the Friends it Brought me, r CHAPTER II. Henry Ward Beecher. — Mrs. Beecher. — A Long Hill Oft Climbed. — Two Old Sunday-School Boys in Council.-^A Friend for Life. — He Seemed to Know Everything. — A Love Scene Not to be Found in Novels, 6 CHAPTER III. General Grant. — One of His Predictions which Hasn't Been Fulfilled. — We Drove Together through Central Park. — I Surrendered Uncon- ditionally. — The Truly Great are Truly Good. — He Could Not Exult over a Fallen Foe. — He Teaches a Mare to Trot. — Better THAN Funny, ........14 V vi Contents. CHAPTER IV. FACE Ex-President Cleveland. — I Visit the White House. — The Last Shall be First. — The Magic OF A Letter. — A Wonderful Man at Dispatch- ing Business. — Mrs. Cleveland, - - - - 21 CHAPTER V. Mr. Blaine. — A Jolly Good Fellow. — No Airs ABOUT Him. — A Capital Story-teller. — Quite as Sensitive as Other Men. — A Sympathetic Listener. — Mrs. Blaine. — A Peep Behind the Scenes. — It Might have been a Honeymoon Trip, 27 CHAPTER VI. Going Abroad. — A Forlorn Hope. — My Own Private Story. — The Prince of Wales. — Every Inch a Prince, and the Prince of Good Fellows beside. — His Courtesy, Thoughtfulness, Tact, AND Kindness. — Why the English Like Him. — English Manners in the Prince's Presence. — One Yankee who Swears by Him, • • - 35 CHAPTER VII. London Society. — Americans have a Mistaken Idea about it. — Good Taste and Unaffected Man- ners. — Duke of Teck. — Earl Dudley. — British Loyalty. — Visitors are Made to Feel at Home. — The Egyptian Princes. — Victoria, D, G., etc.— " God Save the Queen," - - - - 45 Contents. vii CHAPTER VIII. PAGE Entertaining in London. — English "Swells" Dress Plainly at Parties. — No Display of Jewelry. — Baron Rothschild. — Brains Rule in Good Society. — Mrs. Ronalds. — Mrs. Mackat. — Lady Arthur Paget. — No Crowd or Noise in the Best Houses. — No Display, - - 54 CHAPTER IX. "The Season." — Summer, but Not. Hot Weath- er. — A Chance for Americans. — Entertain- ments with a Rush. — Rain also. — William Beat- TY Kingston. — George Augustus Sala. — La- bouchere. — Sir Morell Mackenzie : — Newman Hall. — Joseph Parker. — Lady Wilde. — Oscar Wilde. — Willie Wilde, 63 CHAPTER X. London Clubs. — Semi-homes, Semi-offices. — Great Blessings to Wives. — The Savage. — A Saturday Night. — Hospitable to Americans. — I " Take Off" Biggar. — The Lyric Club. — The New Club. — The Odd Volumes. — The Gallery. — Title AND Rank. 74 CHAPTER XI. Henry Irving. — A Most Remarkable Man. — Dis- cussed as an Actor — Agreed Upon as a Man. — He was my Friend. — Always Says and Does the Right Thing. — My Impudence and his Good viii Contents. PAGS Nature. —Always at his Best. — Never Talks of Himself. — When does he Sleep ? — A Talking Face. — His Delicate Way of Doing Things. — Kind to Americans. — His Little Joke on Me. — Henry Irving, Junior, ...... 83 CHAPTER XII. Americans in England. — No End to Them. — They are Well Treated. — Not Fair to Our Minis. TER. — Mr. Phelps. — Fourth of July at the Legation. — An American Monte Cristo. — The School Treat. — English Shops and American Customers. — Howard Paul. — Unfortunate Yan- kees, ..-97 CHAPTER XIII. Buffalo Bill. — He Met Old Friends. — A Lion in Society. — Nate Saulsbury. — Jack Burke. — In- dians in Drawing-rooms. — I Entertained Them. — A Patriotic Explanation. — The Boys Told Sto- ries. — One about Ned Buntline. — Buck Taylor's Pie, - - - 108 CHAPTER XIV. My Success Abroad. — No Secret about it. — Never Made Fun of the English. — Nor Forced My- self upon Them. — Interested Myself in my Friends. — No "Effete" Nonsense. — Did not "Toady." — No Favors Demanded. — Drank Nothing Stronger than Water. — When I Ad- mired Anything I Said so. — Put on No "Airs," 122 Contents. ix CHAPTER XV. PAGE Answers to Correspondents. — My Recitations Abroad. — The Renovation and Ornamentation OF the Chestnut. — Mark Twain on Chestnuts. — How I Handled Them. — Punch Explains for Me. — Devise Something New. — The English Like Puns. — An Historic Specimen. — Respect other Artists. — The Landlord and the Dog. — An Irish Toast. — Taking Bits of American Humor. — Too Much Advice, ...... 136 CHAPTER XVI. English Respect for the Dramatic Profession. — The Lord Mayor's Dramatic Reception, — Wil- son Barrett. — Toole. — One of His Stories. — "Gus" Harris. — W. S. Gilbert. — Sir Arthur Sullivan. — Charles Wyndham. — Madame Patti. — English Theaters Don't Equal Ours, - - 147 CHAPTER XVII. Beautiful Paris. — French as I act it. — In Search of Napoleon's Tomb. — Ordering a Bath. — Res- taurant French. — Legal, but Frenchy. — The Champs ELYsf;ES. — French Girls not as Pretty as Ours. — Clean Streets. — A War Story to the Point. — Some of the Sights. — A Vanderbilt In- cident. 160 CHAPTER XVIII. Americans Ahead of the World. — Some New Yorkers. — Cornelius Vanderbilt. — He Sent Me X Contents. PAGE Around. — So Did Peter Cooper. — A Thompson Street Affair. — Chauncey Depew. — That Way OF His. — Bob Ingersoll. — His Perfect Home. — Religion and Philosophy. — Tom Ochiltree. — He Imitated Washington, 173 CHAPTER XIX. American Actors. — They are Great Story-Tel- lers. — AuGusTiN Daly and His Brother. — James Lewis. — In re Coquelin. — Nat Goodwin. — De Wolf Hopper. — Barrett. — Booth. — Chanfrau's Best Story. — Ben Maginley. — No Admittance Behind the Scenes. — Mark Twain's Experience. — Maurice Barrymore, ..---. 188 CHAPTER XX. After-dinner Speakers. — Englishmen Admire Ours. — Tom Waller.— Chauncey Depew. — Wayne Mc- Veagh — Moses P. Handy. — The Bald Eagle of Westchester. — The Man Who Didn't Kick. — Competitive Lying. — Horace Porter. — Bill Nye. — James Whitcomb Riley. — Judge Brady. — Judge Davis. — David Dudley Field. .... 200 CHAPTER XXI. Newspaper Men are Reliable Smilers. — John Cock- erill. — General Sherman Explains. — Some of Cockerill's Yarns. — Amos Cummings.— Some of his Stories. — Joe Howard Brings Down the House. — Willie Winter. — Henry Guy Carleton Contents. xi PAGE ON Commercial Travelers. — Bob Morris. — Joe Clarke. — John Reed. — Will Starks. — George Williams. — The Press Club. — The Fellowcraft. 209 CHAPTER XXII. Some Points of Business. — No Trick about It. — A Matter of Long Practice. — My Earliest Ap- pearance. — Joe Jefferson. — A Gallows for a Stage. — Buffalo Bill with Red Hair. — My Friends the Newsboys. — I Learned Something from Talmage. — A Hint to Preachers — Marcus Spring's Story. — The Boston Common Incident Adapted, 223 CHAPTER XXHL Part of My Pay. — The Fun I Get from My Hear- ers. — They Asked for My Father. — A Thrifty Hebrew. — No Creed about Money. — Expected TO Parade. — Some Great-hearted Philadelphi- ANs. — A Blind Orchestra. — Cabmen's Jokes. — Cak-l Zerrahn's Predicament. — Taming a Bear. — Mind-reading. 233 CHAPTER XXIV. An Ocean Trip. — A Glorious Bracer. — Some People Whom You Don't Meet. — Creditors. — People You are Sure to See. — The Doctor. — Fred Douglass. — Honeymoon Couples. — Gossip. — The Resurrection of "Plug" Hats. — Custom-house Officials. — The Traveling Dude. — When Blaine Smiled ....... .. 246 xii Contents. CHAPTER XXV. PAGE Myself Once More. — One Use of Affliction. — Picking up Material. — Dining Customs. — Not the Right Story. — Two Stammerers. — I Laugh at My Jokes. — Sometimes the Audience Laugh at the Wrong Place. — Critical Audiences. — Hard Work'. — Good-bv, 259 THE PEOPLE rVE SMILED WITH. CHAPTER I. "Yours, Merrily,"— How I Came to Smile. — Dami Nature out of Sorts, but she Relented. — What THE Old Lady Gave me. — How Others Came to Smile WITH ME. — Smiling as a Business, and the Friends it Brought me. Why one man should smile more than some others, and how I chanced to be that man, may properly be stated here, by way of explana- tion of the following pages. Besides, I am the smallest man mentioned in this book, and " the shortest horse is soonest curried." To begin at the beginning, as the crane said when he swallowed the eel head first, old Dame Nature appeared to be out of sorts when she got hold of me. She put a couple of feet under me, but she left a couple of feet off of my stature. She didn't make me tall enough to look down on anybody, or strong enough to thrash anybody, so I never was allowed the small-boy privilege of " putting on airs." 2 The People I've Smiled With : After a while Dame Nature took another look, and seemed to think she hadn't done the fair thing by me, so she gave me an expansive smile and a big laugh. I liked them both ; they amused me a great deal whenever there chanced to be nobody else looking after me. I cultivated that smile and that laugh until the one grew very broad and the other very loud. In fact, both became so prominent as to attract a great deal of attention. Pretty soon they began to make themselves useful to me at school. All of my readers who have been to school know that boys aren't the gentlest creatures in the world ; turn a lion and a lot of schoolboys loose in the same well- fenced lot, and the lion would be roaring for the police in less than five minutes. As for a small boy who isn't strong enough to fight, — why, there will always be a crowd of bigger boys who will see how near they can come to worrying him to death without killing him. There were some boys of that kind in the school I first attended, and they "went for me." I tried to defend myself with my smile and my laugh ; I hadn't anything else to hit them with, and I beat them. They gave up when they found I didn't worry worth a cent. Then they were so surprised that they stood Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 3 around and asked what kind of fellow I was any way. In reply, I smiled and laughed some more, and told them a story or two. After that I was the biggest boy in school. " Orpheus, with his lute, made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing." I don't wish to belittle Orpheus's well-earned reputation, but in spite of his great achieve- ments I don't believe he could have drawn a bigger crowd in our old school yard with his music than I always did as soon as I laughed a specimen or two. No sooner would I get to work than the juvenile toughs would stop fighting, and the juvenile saints stop doing nothing, all to gather around me, and hear my jokes or tell me some, — it didn't seem to matter much which, — so they could see me smile and hear me laugh. When I became old enough to want to select a life occupation, I found myself in a serious quandary. All the callings to which boys at first naturally incline seemed closed against me. I couldn't be clown in a circus or enter for a walking-match, for my legs were too short. I couldn't preach, for my head wouldn't reach the top of the pulpit. There was no chance for me in Congress, for the 4 The People I've Smiled With : Speaker couldn't see me, to recognize me, unless I stood on a chair, which would be contrary to the " Rules of the House ;" and I couldn't become John L. Sulli- van's rival, for my fighting-weight was too light. It occurred to me one day that there were a good many solemn people in the world, and none too many men who made a business of provoking their fellow-men to laugh. If I could persuade enough people to listen to me, I might make it my business to smile for revenue. Incidentally I might do some good ; for if I, with the handicapping I was enduring, could smile and be merry, any big healthy fellow ought to go out into his own back yard and kick himself whenever he found himself becoming miserable. The more I thought over this plan, the better I liked it. I already had some idea of how to do it, for I had " tried it on a dog," as the theatrical people say: that is, I'd told a great many jokes and sung dozens of funny songs to men who couldn't laugh much easier than George Washington could tell a lie. I'd learned how to "size up" a crowded house, for I had given a good many dramatic entertain- ments in our barn (price of admission, one pin), Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 5 and the audience was generally discriminating — and mixed. So I went into the '' humourous entertain- ment " business. I also succeeded — so other folks say. I did so well that people who heard and saw me always put on their most cheerful faces when afterward we met ; as for me, no one ever heard me growl or grumble. I've had the pleasure of meeting many of the people of whom the world talks a great deal ; they have been kind enough to listen to me, chat with me, smile with me, and otherwise treat me so well that I can't help talking about them. So here goes. CHAPTER II. Henry Ward Beecher. — Mrs. Beecher. — A Long Hill Oft Climbed. — Two Old Sunday-School Boys in Council. — A Friend for Life. — He Seemed to Know Everything. — A Love Scene Not to be Found in Novels. When I started in my professional career as caterer to human risibilities, I worked for noth- ing and was glad of the chance, for oppor- tunity to appear and become known was what I needed. As soon as I dared, however, I began to charge for my services. My first fee was fifty cents, but it made a great differ- ence in the treatment I received, and, strange though it may appear, the higher my fee, the greater is the courtesy and attention I receive. Why, when I used to volunteer to recite at a church entertainment, I would be the last per- son reached by the strawberries and cream ; but now, when I am paid almost all the money received at the door, I am likely to be the first person served. People care most for what costs them most ; I know how it is myself. After getting a good deal of practice in 6 Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 7 reciting at social affairs, and having acquired a large and carefully assorted lot of humourous and pathetic songs and stories, I determined to look for larger and more profitable audi- ences. To get them, it seemed to me I needed the indorsement of some prominent people, so I started in search of it. Any man of the world, or of ordinary business sense, would have nosed around among his acquaintances until he found some one who knew somebody else who knew somebody in particular, and then have got letters from one to another, — just as half a million able-bodied American citizens who want office have been approach- ing President Harrison during the past few months. But I was as "green" as I was short ; I knew no way but the straightest ; and I can't say now, after looking back, that I'm a bit sorry for it. The first indorsement I went for — and also the first I got — was that of Henry Ward Beecher. He was prominent ; his opinion of anyone was always quoted ; and I knew from his sermons that he had the sort of heart that would sympathise with a little bit of a fellow trying to handle a great big contract. So over to Brooklyn I went, and climbed Columbia Heights. Oh, that climb ! It's a beautiful 8 The People I've Smiled With: hill when you've reached the top of it, but it isn't the sort of hill that I should design with special reference to the legs of fellows only three or four feet high. I consider myself an authority on Columbia Heights, for I had to climb it more than half a dozen times before I got a glance at Mr. Beecher, and another half a dozen before I came to know him as I wanted to. Bless the great-hearted old man ! To once more see his face break into a smile, and the kindly twinkle come into his eyes, I'd go up that steep slope a dozen times again, and do it on my knees every time. Well, Mr. Beecher's door was slammed in my face half a dozen different times. The servants couldn't have taken me for a burglar or sneak-thief, I was too neatly dressed for a beggar, so I had to conclude that they took me for a book-agent. That wasn't encourag- ing, though some book-agents are good fellows. I couldn't understand it ; the only thing I fully comprehended was that the doorstep wasn't specially designed for a tired little fellow to rest on. The seventh time I called, Mrs. Beecher chanced to open the door. When she had looked down long enough to find who it was that had rung the bell, she smiled a little Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 9 and asked me what I wanted. " I want to see Mr. Beecher," said I ; then, paraphrasing Gen- eral Grant's historic dispatch, I continued, "and I'm going to keep on coming until I find him." That remark, I afterward learned, went right to the heart of Mrs. Beecher's own perse- vering Yankee nature, and the good woman told me to come again, when I should see her husband if he were at home, I went ; Mrs. Beecher received me, and called back to her husband, " Papa, here's that little man who wants to see you." Mr. Beecher came forward ; his parlour floor was a long suite of rooms with his study in the rear. He looked as solemn and sharp-eyed as a country deacon to whom a stranger is trying to sell a horse. I like to be looked at that way, though ; it means that a man is " sizing me up ; " I can stand it as long as he can. " Mr. Beecher," said I, " I'm trying to make a living by making people laugh." " Well," said he, " if you can make people merry, you deserve all you can make out of it." " I can do it," said I. " I'll make jou laugh if you're not careful." I guess he wasn't care- ful, for his face suddenly broke up like a cloud with the sun jumping through it. I went on : " I want a better chance than I've had, and I'd lo The People I 've Smiled With : like to let myself loose before your Sunday- school. I've been a Sunday-school boy, and I know what that sort of fellow likes." " I've been one myself," said the old man. He looked dreamy a moment ; then he began to chuckle and shake over some mischievous boyish memory, — I don't know what it was ; but I smiled in sympathy with him, and just then his eye met mine. That settled it ; I'd got him. That isn't all either; hed got me, not only for the remainder of his life, but for all that might be left of mine. " Well, little chap," said he, " I'm not mana- ger of the Sunday-school ; you go and talk to the superintendent. I guess you're able to hoe your own row." I went, and the following Christmas morn- ing I was called by telegraph to appear before the Sunday-school. Mr. Beecher was there, and made a hit, as usual ; but boys and girls can swallow fun as fast as if it were ice-cream, so I made a hit too. After that Mr. Beecher gave me a letter ; there weren't many words in it, but every one of them was worth a heap of money to me. I printed the letter in my circular, and I soon found myself a good deal of a fellow in the estimation of the public. Engagements began to crowd upon me, and Recolledions of a Merry Little Life. ti when I tried to lessen the number, for time's sake, by raising my prices, I found that money was no object to the people who wanted to see me and smile with me. But that wasn't all the dear old man did for me. Always after that, when we happened to be in the same place, he looked me out and took pains to say something cheery to me. I've got head and heart for a good deal out- side of my business, and when I think of that great man, courted and flattered by thousands, hated and envied by a few, carrying in his great warm heart the cares and sorrows of hundreds and thousands of souls, giving strength to the weak and hope to the wicked, and all the time having a great battle of his own to fight, — when I think of all this and remember that he yet found heart and time to offer cheery companionship to a little fellow like me, I have a very clear idea about the salt of the earth. I afterward saw a great deal of Mr. Beecher when he was in England. I travelled there with him at times, and found him a wonder- ful combination of greatness and goodness. There seemed nothing of interest to humanity or in the world about which he hadn't thought clearly, and with a conscience in first-class 12 The People I've Smiled With: working order. To me — and everybody else who met him, I believe — he was books, newspapers, and a whole university course beside. Several years ago I thought I would like to see President Cleveland, but I didn't want to straggle along in a line and look at him only about a second ; it takes a little fellow like me a long time to get a good square look at a President of the United States, I said as much to Mr. Beecher one day, and he replied : " I guess that can be managed, young fel- low." Then he sat down and wrote a letter, of which more anon. One of my pleasantest recollections of Mr. Beecher has its scene in the home of Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, of London, whose guest Mr. Beecher was for a time. At a pleasant little reception given by Dr. Parker the rooms were so crowded that Mr. Beecher, having given his seat to a lady, stood beside the chair in which his wife sat. Mrs. T, P. O'Connor, wife of a prominent member of the Home Rule party in Parliament, and herself a most brilliant and charming woman, — an American besides, — re- cited a pathetic Southern story. Tears began to gather in Mr. Beecher's eyes : he did not want to make a spectacle of himself, so he RecoUectio7is of a Merry Little Life. 13 softly stooped until he sat upon the floor. The recitation continued ; so did the flow of tears ; at last the old man hid his face in his wife's lap ; the old lady bent over him and stroked his forehead ; and for once I thanked God that I was very short, for otherwise I might not have been the only witness of this true love- passage between husband and wife. After that, any one who told me that love was only an accident of youth was wasting his breath. I wouldn't have missed that sight for all the Romeos and Juliets in the world. I've often swapped jokes with Henry Ward Beecher ; we've pressed each other hard in laughing- matches ; he has been a great help to me in business and many other ways ; but dearer than all my other memories of him is that which taught me that true love is eternal, that gray hairs cannot chill it, but, on the contrary, that— " Where the snow hes thickest there's nothing can freeze." CHAPTER III. General Grant. — One of His Predictions which Hasn't Been Fulfilled. — We Drove Together THROUGH Central Park. — I Surrendered Uncondi- tionally. — The Truly Great are Truly Good. — He Could Not Exult over a Fallen Foe. — He Teaches A Mare to Trot. — Better than Funny. The human face is a good indication of character, but I've often found that while it is very good for this purpose, it amounts only to what the miners call " surface indications." It tells of much that you will be sure to find if you search farther, but it doesn't inform you of a great many things which you are sure to stumble over sooner or later. The foregoing isn't part of one of my recita- tions ; it is merely a reflection or two that come to my mind as I think of General Grant. I had heard and thought a great deal about him while he was General and President, and, like more than half the youngsters in the United States, I thought him as serious, solemn, and preoccupied as the Sphinx itself. I hoped that some day I might see him, — ■ 14 Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 15 " A cat may look at a king," — and I also hoped that when that day should come he might look at me, if only for an instant ; though I expected that the glance would be from a pair of cold, steel-blue-gray eyes, with a firm-set mouth a little way beneath them. Well, one day I went with my father to a camp-meeting at Martha's Vineyard, where General Grant chanced to be staying. My father, as he and I were strolling along to- gether, stopped suddenly and began chatting with a rather short, stout, modest-looking gentleman. A moment or two later my father said : "General Grant, allow me to present my son." Gracious ! you could have knocked me down with a feather. Really, General Grant ? And I only little Marshall Wilder? I felt as if I were shrinking down into my boots ; but I guess I wasn't ; for the General managed to reach my head without stooping; he patted me kindly, and said, "You'll be a little General some day, my boy." I'm not anxious to have his prophecy ful- filled, for I've too much respect for our present major-generals, brigadiers, and a lot of other 1 6 The People I've Stniled With : splendid West Pointers I know. Besides, I'm otherwise engaged ; I'd rather half kill a man with a joke than with a bullet ; nevertheless the military dreams I indulged in that night would have knocked Napoleon silly, — that's about the size of it, — and they'd paralyze Moltke, Sir Garnet Wolseley, and General Schofield if I could repeat them to-day. I didn't expect ever to meet General Grant again, or to presume upon a casual introduc- tion, such as men as prominent as Grant have to endure fifty or a hundred times a day. I could not imagine that he would remember me if ever we chanced to meet again. But one day, while I was standing at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, who should chance to step from a Belt Line horse-car but General Grant. Again I felt smaller than my very small self, but I remembered that I was an American citizen, so I braced up and said: "Good-morning, General." *' Why, good-morning, my little man," said he. '* How are you feeling this morning ? " "Tip-top," I replied, "I was just going to take a run in the Park." He threw a pleasant wink down to me and said : " How would it do to have a horse do the Recollections of a Merry Little Life. ^7 running, and you sit behind him?" Then he turned to one of the Park cabmen and said : " I want you to take my friend and me around the Park." Away we went. Good air and distinguished company made me feel merrier than usual, and I let off a joke or two ; the General " saw " me and went me one or two better. We kept up a good-natured fight of that kind all the way through the Park and back again ; I worked my biggest guns and used up all my ammunition, but in the end I found myself on the list with General Pemberton, General Lee, and a lot of other good fellows, — I'd had to sur- render unconditionally. Nobody need talk to me about Grant being " the silent man." And what a big, honest smile he had ! I've one myself, I think, but I wish he could have left me his in his will. The idea of a man who had handled a dozen armies, carried a nation on his shoulders through four years of fighting in the field and eight years more in Washing- ton, giving an hour or more of his time and attention to a little chap whom he chanced to meet on a street corner, while a score of mil- lionnaires would almost have given their heads to be in my place beside him ! As we rode along, hundreds of people recognized him and 1 8 The People I've Smiled With: raised their hats to him, but he returned their salutes as modestly as if he was nobody in particular. But he was that sort of man. He never seemed to exult in conquering men, though that had been his most successful work in life. General Horace Porter told me that, after the surrender of Lee, Grant said : " I must get off for Washington to-morrow." " Why," said Porter, "you haven't yet looked at the troops you have conquered." " No," replied Grant, " and I won't ; they feel bad enough already." General Porter said also that the reason Grant allowed the officers of the Army of Northern Virginia to retain their side-arms after the surrender was that he saw Lee carried a mag- nificent diamond-studded sword given him by the State of Virginia, and he hadn't the heart to deprive him of it. When it came to horses, however. Grant not only liked to conquer them, but to exult about it afterward. My friend Ned Stokes, proprietor of the Hoffman House, with whom I have often smiled (though not at his gorgeous bar), told me that one day when Grant was his guest Robert Bonner said to him, at the Hoffman, ** Stokes, bring Grant over to my place to- morrow, and I'll have Budd Doble drive Dexter Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 19 a specimen mile for him." So over they went, and Dexter did a mile beautifully. Then a handsome gray mare named Peer- less was brought out and sent around the track in handsome style. She seemed to go like a streak of lightning with a pack of fire- crackers at its tail, but Grant remarked : " I believe I could make the mare beat that time, if Mr. Bonner would let me." " Certainly," said Mr. Bonner pleasantly, but with a " Young-man-you-don't-know-as-much- as-you-think-you-do " look. Grant took the ribbons and asked Stokes to take the time. "Go!" shouted Bonner. Whiz! went the mare. Grant *' lifting " her a little. "Well? " said the General, after completing the mile. "There is the watch," replied Stokes, and the party saw that, with Grant to manage her, Peerless had beaten her previous time by one second. Stokes was amazed ; Bonner was more so ; but Grant — why, he crowed all day long over that exploit, and told of it to every acquaintance he met ! As I said before, there's more to a man — who is a man — than shows in his face ; no face is big enough to hold it all. I've seen all the portraits and busts of Grant ; I look at them 20 The People I've Smiled With. reverently and loyally, in memory of the man's great achievements ; but, after all, human na- ture is human nature, and my mind always goes back to the day when he put off what- ever he was about to do, and took little me for an hour's drive in the Park. The busts and pictures are all serious and grand, as they ought to be, but for the life of me I can't help seeing a broad, honest smile come over each of them when I've looked at it a minute. Just one more story about him. During our ride I said to him that it must seem funny, after so active a life, for him to be living so quietly. He replied : "It's a thousand times better than funny, my boy : it's rest.'' And from the expression of his face I knew he meant more than words could say. CHAPTER IV. Ex-President Cleveland. — I Visit the White House.— The Last Shall be First.— The Magic ok a Letter.— A Wonderful Man at Dispatching Business. — Mrs. Cleveland. About three years ago I went to Washing- ton for the first time. It may have been rough on Washington society that I had not been there before, but 'twas rough on me, too, — so condolences are mutual. I went there to give some drawing-room entertainments, but as it was my first visit to the Capital, I determined to see something and somebody out of the way of business. The first call I made was at the White House. A man at the door stopped me — for I was walking boldly in, as if I belonged there. " What do you want ? " he asked. " I'd like to see President Cleveland," I re- plied. *' Then go right up-stairs and turn to the right," said he. This sounded businesslike and encouraging, 21 22 The People I've Smiled With: but when I reached the head of the stair I was stopped by another Cerberus who asked : " What do you want ? ' " President Cleveland," I gasped ; flights of stairs never have any pity on my short legs. " Step right into that room," said he, pointing to a doorway. I entered, getting my best Sunday smile ready for the President, but instead of Mr. Cleveland I found twenty or thirty other American citizens who were on the same errand as I. They didn't seem pleased, either, to see an addition, small though he was, to the crowd. Some senators wer.e there ; also some representatives, and a lot of possible future Presidents, yet it was only the beginning of the day. It didn't take me long to make up my mind that I never would allow either party to run me for the Presidency, if business had to begin so early in the morning, and in such earnest. I also made up my mind that I was in for a long wait, and I couldn't see anything lying about for a man to amuse himself with. It occurred to me that if I were to send in my letter from Mr. Beecher it might prepare the way for me, so I said to one of the coloured attendants : Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 23 " Take this in, will you ? I'll await my turn." The letter read as follows : December 24, 1886. President Grover Cleveland : Dear Sir : Marshall P. Wilder desires an introduction to you, and since in his English career he has been received by the Prince of Wales, and is a favourite with nobles and com- moners of high degree, he will feel honoured if you will receive him kindly. He asks nothing but the privilege of conferring pleasure. His entertainments are highly laughter-provoking and of an original character. He deserves great credit for making a brave struggle against difficulties that would have appalled others. He is a most worthy and respectable person, and his efforts in my church on sundry occa- sions have given very great amusement both to the children and to the grown folks. Yours sincerely, Henry Ward Beecher. In a very few minutes an attendant came out and said : " Will Mr. Wilder please step forward ? " I stepped. I forgive the other fellows for the scowls they gave me, for it must have been provoking to see the last go first — and such a little one. I could see some 24 The People I've Smiled With : of them asking one another with their eyes, " Who is he ? " and some of them looked as if they were thinking, " Well, it's not always size that makes the man." Mr. Cleveland met me very kindly, and asked : " What can I do for you, Mr. Wilder? " Poor man ! I suppose he was so used to men who called only to ask favours that he took it as a matter of course that somewhere about my clothes I had an axe to grind. So I made haste to reply : " Nothing at all, Mr. President, except the pleasure of shaking hands with you. I didn't vote for you, but that doesn't seem to have made any difference." Two gentlemen who were present, I after- ward learned, were Cabinet of^cers, so there must have been business on hand ; neverthe- less the President kindly said : " Sit down. Tell me something about your- self. What are you doing down here ? " I dropped into a chair, and Mr. Cleveland chatted pleasantly with- me for a while ; then he looked at Mr. Beecher's note and said : " Mr. Wilder, this is a very valuable letter. Hadn't you better keep it ? " Bless the man ! I wonder how many others Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 25 in his position would have been so thoughtful. I quickly thanked him, and told him nothing he ever had said would be more heartily appre- ciated, for, while the letter would have been of no use to him, it was extremely valuable to me. But that wasn't all he did ; he was kind enough to invite me to call on him and his wife the next day. I don't suppose I can add anything to the praises which cleverer pens than mine have written of Mrs. Cleveland ; she has been glorified by men of all classes, and of styles differing — well, from General Sherman's to Tim Campbell's. I simply wish to indorse everything good that every one has said of her, and wish also that I could 're-arrange an unabridged dictionary so that all the words would speak her praise. Mr. Cleveland's faculty for seeing people in rapid succession, yet getting rid of them with- out offending any one, amazed me. I know some business men who are noted throughout the United States for being " rustlers " in man- aging human nature ; I've stood in their offices and admired their tact, but I never saw any of them dispatch business so rapidly as Mr. Cleve- land. I was in the crowd one day, and pur- posely kept among the latest comers, just to see how he would dispatch people — no other 26 The People I've Smiled With : word expresses the operation, yet none seemed to go away feeling hurt. I finally dropped into a brown study over it, wondering how it was done, when suddenly I heard, " How are you to-day, Mr. Wilder?" and looking up, I saw the President's face beaming on me as pleasantly as if all his work had been mere fun, and as if he had nothing else to do for the day. I afterward went to a "swell" reception at the White House, in company with my friends Moses P. Handy, of the Philadelphia Clover Club, and the late W. F. O'Brien. There were any number of gorgeous diplomats present, with epauletted and gold-laced officers of our own, ladies in wonderful costumes, and all push- ing their way to the famous " Blue Room," where beside his handsome wife stood the President, looking as dignified and distin- guished as any good citizen could ask ; but I like best to remember him in every-day dress, receiving every one who came and trying to do the fair thing by everyone. I was so impressed that I wanted to do something real nice for him — something that no one else had done, so I left Washington without giving him a bit of advice about how to run the Government. I hope he was duly grateful. CHAPTER V. Mr. Blaine. — A Jolly Good Fellow. — No Airs about Him. — A Capital Story-teller. — Quite as Sensitive AS Other Men. — A Sympathetic Listener. — Mrs. Blaine. — A Peep Behind the Scenes. — It Might have been a Honeymoon Trip. While I was at Washington I was " taken around," by some dear old friends who wanted me to be acquainted with some of the " big " men, and also wanted them to be acquainted with a little man. Nowhere else in the world have I been more kindly treated ; nowhere have I found it harder to get out of a house where I had just dropped in. How other callers managed to stay so short a time as some did was a mystery to me. Perhaps short calls are as easy as running the government or making a fortune — when one is used to it, but it did seem very odd to me, to see a well-dressed, intelligent couple, whom I knew at sight would be charming company, call on a lady equally intelligent and charming, and then hear a con- versation something like this : " Good-morning." 27 28 The People I've Smiled With: " Oh, how do you do ; I'm so glad to see you." " Thank you. Isn't it lovely weather ? " " Indeed, yes. How well you are looking!" " So kind of you to say so. {Rising.) Do come and see me." " Oh, you're not going? I've enjoyed your call so much. Good-morning." " G^^i7^-morning." They have to do it in this way a great deal of the time, during the season. There are so many people in town whom one wants to see, and must see, that there's no way of doing all except by making five-minute calls, and dash- ing madly in a carriage from place to place. I've heard some society fellows in New York boast of the number of calls they'd made on a single New Year's day, but a day or two in Washington society would take the conceit out of them. And Washington people — those who belong there — do it so easily, too ; they enter a drawing-room in as leisurely a way as if they'd come to spend the day in old-style back-country fashion, and go to prayer-meeting with the family afterward. They depart in the same deliberate, well-bred manner; you'd sup- pose, to look at them, that they were wonder- ing how and where to kill a couple of hours of Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 29 time, instead of squeezing twenty or thirty calls into it. One of the most interesting men in Wash- ington is Mr. Blaine. I've seen a great deal of him, and the more I meet him, the oftener I want to meet him again. He has a way of making a fellow feel entirely at ease with him which is wonderfully pleasant — if you chance yourself to be the fellow. He takes your hand — if he likes you — in a way that makes you feel that you're his long-lost friend, and he chats with you as freely and merrily as if he hadn't a thing to do or think of but make himself agreeable. And how he can tell stories ! Lots of other men do it, but after a while you begin to think they've been out nutting, and found all the chestnuts. Not that I object to chestnuts; I've gathered some myself in my time, and found that people enjoyed them, when prop- erly served. Mn Blaine enjoys them himself, apparently, for I've seen him listen to the same story four or five times in as many days, and laugh heartily each time. And how he can laugh ! Should he ever go into the entertain- ment business he'd knock out all the rest of us. I first met Mr. Blaine on shipboard. One 30 The People I've Smiled With: day when the sea was running high, and the wind on deck went through a man Hke a piece of bad news, the captain invited several of us into his cabin ; beside your humble servant there were Mr. Scott Cassatt, Mr. T. C. Craw- ford the well-known journalist, the Earl of Donoughmore, and Mr. Blaine. Chat soon be- came general, and everything reminded Mr. Blaine of a story. The Earl had been travelling on state business, and having dispatches chase him from place to place without finding him, which reminded Mr. Blaine of an army officer who graduated at West Point before the days of the Pacific Mail Steamship line. Immedi- ately after graduating he was assigned to the Fourth Infantry, stationed at San Francisco, and set out for his post via Cape Horn. It took exactly nine months to make the journey. He was a very bad sailor, and was very sick all the way around. When he reached San Francisco he found there was a mistake in his order, and he should have been assigned to the Fifth Regiment, stationed at Fort Mackinaw, Michi- gan. This information was brought by the pony express, then just established, so he had to come back again and undergo another nine months' stretch of horrible seasickness. He finally reached Fort Mackinaw, but after a Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 3^ week's stay the Fifth Regiment was ordered to change places with the Fourth, and he had to go back to San Francisco. As he was starting on his third voyage he said to a friend : " My father gave me a choice between the army and the navy, and I foolishly selected the army. If I had selected the navy I am sure I would have had a much better chance of remaining on land." Some one told of a friend of his who trav- elled a great deal, but hadn't the faculty of see- ing things ; indeed, he seemed to prefer not to see them. " A good deal like an English lord I've heard of," said Mr. Blaine. " On reaching a certain town in Germany he asked his courier what there was to see. ' Nothing whatever, my lord; absolutely nothing.' 'Then,' said his lordship, looking quite happy, 'we'll stay here a month.' " Some of us were talking of men who never did anything for their fellow-men, and Mr. Blaine asked if we weren't a little too hard on them. " If a fellow will be true to himself," said he, ** he may do a great deal of good unawares, and nobody will ever know of it. Why, there's a friend of mine in Maine, a veteran of the Mexican war, who once went up to old Colonel 32 The People I've Smiled With: and said to him, ' Colonel, I owe you more than I ever can repay. In the Mexican war you saved my life three different times.' The Col- onel was somewhat astonished, for he couldn't recall a single incident of the kind, so he asked the fellow to explain. * Why,' was the reply, ' I always kept my eye on you during an en- gagement ; whenever you started to run, I ran too, and three times your example saved my precious life.' " During conversation about the Irish race, the religious Irishman's persistent thought about the great hereafter was alluded to. " Yes," said Mr. Blaine, " and there's good reason for it. The Irish people have such infernal torments at home that they can't be blamed for wanting to avoid any in the next world. If they could believe there was no hell they'd rather die than live. Once at Dublin, toward the end of the opera, Satan was con- ducting Faust through the trap-door which represented the gates of Hades. His majesty got through all right — he was used to going below, but Faust, who was quite stout, got only about half-way in, and no squeezing would get him any farther. Suddenly an Irishman in the gallery exclaimed devoutly, 'Thank God, hell is full!' " Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 33 Because he has been a public man and poli- tician a great many years, Mr. Blaine is sup' posed by some people to be very thick-skinned, but it is impossible to be with him a little while without seeing that he is nothing of the sort. He is quite as sensitive as any other gen- tleman, and any rude remark grates unpleas- antly upon him, even if it has no personal ap- plication. The only time I ever heard him speak of himself was one day when he brought me a caricature of myself which some one aboard ship had drawn. " There, Marshall," said he, " how do you like that ? " " Great Scott ! " I exclaimed, making a face at the picture, "does that look like me?" "Well," said he, " that's exactly the question I ask my- self when the illustrated papers caricature me." I've heard people call Mrs. Blaine "cold," but I saw for myself that the only reason for it was that she was so devoted to her husband that she had no time for more than ordinary civility to any one else. She hovered about Mr. Blaine as tenderly as if she were his mother and he was her pet child. She seemed to an- ticipate his every want, and in this respect her daughters were just like her. It was great fun to me to see Mr. Blaine among the passengers, telling good stories, lis- 34 The People I've Smiled With. tening genially to everybody, and laughing more heartily than any one else. I think I smiled just as long, however, and with a very warm heart, more than one night, when, creep- ing on the lonely deck for a "nightcap" in the shape of a mouthful of fresh air, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Blaine side by side, with one shawl around both of them, softly chatting and doz- ing, like a newly married couple on a wedding trip. A great man's private life is his own, no matter how much he belongs to the public; no one has any right to peep behind the cur- tain ; but an accidental view, such as I've just mentioned, certainly does the beholder a great deal of good, if only by reminding him that public men have hearts quite as big as their fellows — often bigger. CHAPTER VI. Going Abroad. — A Forlorn Hope. — My Own Private Story. — The Prince of Wales. — Every Inch a Prince, AND THE Prince of Good Fellows beside. — His Cour- tesy, Thoughtfulness, Tact, and Kindness. — Why THE English Like Him. — English Manners in the Prince's Presence. — One Yankee who Swears by Him. After I had been in the entertainment business a few years, it occurred to me that I might give my friends a rest and get a change for myself by going abroad. I might make some money beside. English people like ex- tremes as well as others. A number of our greatest men had been well received over there ; so might not there be a chance for one of our smallest ? So I went. I landed there an entire stranger and without much money. I expected up-hill work, but I've a tremendous faith in a man "getting there " if he'll do his level best ; he's sure to have something unexpected turn up to his advantage. A " forlorn hope" almost al- ways achieves a brilliant success, partly through itself, and partly through something it didn't 35 36 The People I've Smiled With: expect. I always, when I have to " nerve up," repeat to myself the following story : Old Jim Peters was a famous bear-hunter in the Adirondacks. Both his ears and his nose were clawed off in bear-fights. When he drank too much he wanted to fight, and if there were no bears in sight he would fight with the first man he met. Jim had a pretty daughter. A young shingle-cutter used to come to see her. The old man met him one night and was going to whip him, but the youngster was so small that it seemed mean to strike him, so instead of beating him the old man said, " Don't you ever come fooling around my daughter again till you bring me a bear, and a live one at that." The young man was rather appalled at the out- look, but he made up his mind that he must have the girl. The ground was covered with deep snow, on which the rain had fallen and frozen till it was very slippery. The hunter's cabin was right at the bottom of a steep hill. As the shingle-cutter reached the top of the ridge, a bear jumped from a rock and grabbed him in his embrace. In the struggle the bear lost his footing and fell, with the youngster on top. Out they shot on the ice and slipped down the hill, going like a double-ripper on a toboggan slide. The young shingle-cutter put his foot Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 37 out behind and made a splendid steer for the cabin. The couple struck the logs in the side of the cabin like a freight train on a down grade, stunning the bear. The door flew open, and out flew old Jimmie to see what was the matter. " There," said the shingle-cutter, " there's the bear — and a live one too." He got the girl. Well, I was in London some time without getting an engagement. One day I met my good friend Perugini, the popular tenor — in spite of his Italian name he is a big-hearted American, and I told him how my luck was succeeding in dodging me. " Why don't you go to the Lyric Club," said he, " and speak a little piece ? Then people will know some- thing about you. I'll send you a card of in- vitation." He kept his word ; I went to the Lyric Club — of which more hereafter — spoke a piece, and was asked for several more. They took so well that through the Club my name was put on the list of speakers at an entertain- ment given for the Gordon Home for Boys. It was to be given at the Grosvenor Hall, and the Prince of Wales and the Princess, with their sons and daughters, were to be present, together with the most brilliant assemblage in London. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Lord 38 The People I've Smiled With : Randolph Churchill, and everybody was to be there, simply because the entertainment was for a charitable purpose. My invitation was as follows : (^ meet ^a !Slouac Qwianne6S me ^Unce 0/ JraCed- ieaae^'td' Ine nonoi 0/ trie co7?7yian'U 0/ a/ me ^^iosof&noi ^atieiu on Q/unaau evenina'_, Jane Sytn_, at YO.SO. Q/Wi/iel at / / o c/acK^. Q^Tn ealtu answ^el i. frau, who used to be a great character actor, and who I hope is making as much fun in the other world as he did in this, used to tell a story of Booth and Edwin Adams in the days when they were both young, aspiring, and very poor. They had gone to Australia to delight the natives with the legitimate drama, but " something intervened to obviate," and they found themselves hard up. They couldn't walk home on the ties, there not being that kind of a route, and they could not exactly see their way to a walking tour upon the ocean ; so they went into seclusion. Chanfrau happened in town, wherever it was, about that time, and, walking about one evening, heard the cheerful sound of a jig proceeding upward from a cellar which seemed also to be a bar- room. He dropped down to see what was go- ing on, and there he found Booth and Adams dancing jigs for drinks. I don't know whether either of them ever denied the story. I heart- ily hope they didn't, for it was fun to think of it when one chanced to see them afterward on the stage in the height of their prosperity. Old Ben Maginley, who, by the way, was not old at all when he died, and whose two hun- dred and fifty pounds avoirdupois I trust is now 194 The Peot'le I've Smiled With : gracing the edge of a fleecy, sunny cloud some- where in the celestial ether, was also a great story-teller. Ben would stand at the corner of the Union Square Hotel on a mild summer evening,when one season had concluded and the agony of the next had not yet begun, and tell stories in an innocent, straightforward, country- farmer fashion that convulsed every one about him. None of his hearers went to a bar-room so long as Ben would continue talking. American actors don't differ much in style and manner from their professional brethren in England, but the ways of American theaters behind the scenes differ decidedly from those on the other side. The green-rooms and " flies " in many London theatres are accessible to a select and specially favoured circle, but it isn't easy for any visitor to get behind the stage of a first-class American theatre. The following explanation by Mark Twain of an attempted visit to Daly's green-room is a fair illustration of what may happen to any one at- tempting to get into the rear of that house or any other prominent New York theatre. He said, at the looth-night dinner of " Tlie Taming of the Shrew ": " I am glad to be here. This is the hardest theatre in New York to get into, even at the front door. I never got in with- Recollectiojis of a Merry Little Life. 195 out hard work. I am glad we have got so far in at last. Two or three years ago I had an appoint ment to meet Mr. Daly on the stage of this theatre at eight o'clock in the evening. Well, I got on a train at Hartford to come to New York and keep the appointment. All I had to do was to come to the back door of the theatre on Sixth Avenue. I did not believe that ; I did not believe it could be on Sixth Avenue, but that is what Daly's note said — Come to that door, walk right in, and keep the appoint- ment. It looked very easy. It looked easy enough, but I had not much confidence in the Sixth Avenue door. Well, I was kind of bored on the train, and I bought some newspapers — New Haven newspapers — and there was not much news in them, so I read the advertise- ments. There was one advertisement of a bench show. I had heard of bench shows, and I often wondered what there was about them to interest people. I had seen bench shows, lectured to bench shows in fact, but I didn't want to advertise them or to brag about them. Well, I read on a little and learned that a bench show was not a bench show — but dogs, not benches at all — only dogs. I began to be in- terested, and, as there was nothing else to do, I read every bit of that advertisement, and 196 The People I've Smiled With: learned that the biggest thing in this show was a St. Bernard dog that weighed one hundred and forty-five pounds. Before I got to New York, I was so interested in the bench shows, that I made up my mind to go to one the first chance I got. Down on Sixth Avenue, near where that back door might be, I began to take things leisurely. I did not like to be in too much of a hurry. There was not anything in sight that looked like a back door. The near- est approach to it was a cigar store, so I went in and bought a cigar, not too expensive, but it cost enough to pay for any information I might get, and leave the dealer a fair profit. Well, I did not like to be too abrupt, to make the man think me crazy, by asking him if that was the way to Daly's Theatre, so I started gradually to lead up to the subject, asking him first if that was the way to Castle Garden. When I got to the real question, and he said he would show me the way, I was astonished. He sent me through a long hallway, and I found myself in a back yard. Then I went through a long passage-way and into a little room, and there before my eyes was a big St. Bernard dog lying on a bench. There was another door beyond, and I went there and was met by a big, fierce man with a fur cap on and coat off, Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 197 who remarked, " Fhwat do yez want ?" I told him I wanted to see Mr. Daly. " Yez can't see Mr. Daly this time of night," he responded. I urged that I had an appointment Avith Mr. Daly, and gave him my card, which did not seem to impress him much. " Yez can't get in and yez can't smoke here. Throw away that cigar. If yez want to see Mr. Daly, yez'll have to be after going to the front door and buy a ticket, and then if yez have luck and he's around that way yez may see him." I was getting discouraged, but I had one re- source left that had been of good service in similar emergencies. Firmly but kindly I told him my name was Mark Twain, and I awaited results. There were none. He was not fazed a bit. "Fhwere's your order to see Mr. Daly?" he asked. I handed him the note, and he examined it intently. " My friend," I re- marked, " you can read that better if you hold it the other side up"; but he took no notice of the suggestion, and finally asked, " Where's Mr. Daly's name?" "There it is," I told him, "on the top of the page." "That's all right," he said, " that's where he always puts it, but I don't see the " W " in his name," and he eyed me distrustfully. Finally he asked, " Fhwat do yez want to see Mr. Daly for?" " Business." 198 The People I've Smiled With. "Business?" "Yes." It was my only hope. "Fhvvat kind — theatres?" That was too much. " No." " What kind of shows, then ? " " Bench shows." It was risky, but I was desperate. " Bench shows, is it — Avhere ? " The big man's face changed, and he began to look interested. "New Haven." "New Haven," is it? Ah, that's going to be a fine show. I'm glad to see you. Did you see a big dog in the other room?" "Yes." "How much do you think that dog weighs?" "One hundred and forty- five pounds." " Look at that, now ! He's a good judge of dogs, and no mistake. He weighs all of one hundred and thirty-eight. Sit down and shmoke, — go on and shmoke your cigar, I'll tell Mr. Daly you are here." In a few minutes I was on the stage shaking hands with Mr. Daly, and the big man standing around glowing with satisfaction. " Come around in front," said Mr. Daly, " and see the performance. I will put you into my own box," and as I moved away I heard my honest friend mutter, "Well, he desarves it." Maurice Barrymore is a splendid fellow to smile with ; he always seems good-natured. He is of fine birth and education, and would have been a clergyman could his parents have had things their way ; he would have made one Recollections of a Merry Little Life. ^99 of the curates with whom all girls fall in love. He never slumbers or sleeps, unless while his eyes are open and he is busy talking and tell- ing stories. He has no chestnuts, but any story he tells reaches the dignity of a chestnut in a very short time, it is repeated so industri- ously. CHAPTER XX. After-dinner Speakers. — Englishmen Admire Ours. — Tom Waller. — Chauncey Depew. — Wayne McVeagh. — Moses P. Handy. — The Bald Eagle of Westchester. — The Man Who Didn't Kick. — Competitive Lying. — Horace Porter. — Bill Nye. — James Whitcomb Riley. — Judge Brady. — Judge Davis.-— David Dudley Field. There are a great many clever men in Eng- land, — men who are known to the entire world as orators — but they can't hold a candle to Americans as after-dinner speakers. The Eng- lish respect us for our cattle-ranches, horse- races, wheat-fields, yacht-building, and many other things, but their highest appreciation of America is on account of our after-dinner speakers. They do not read the American newspapers very much as a rule, for which I extend to them my sentiments of profound commiseration, but whenever anything occurs here which calls for a lot of after-dinner speeches from prominent men it has a way of making itself known and talked about all over England. Englishmen never fail to attend Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 201 any social affair in London at which a number of prominent Americans are expected to be present. Our late Consul-General, Tom Waller of Connecticut, was a great favorite there. So was Wayne McVeagh, who, as a cabinet ofificer, was as solemn as the back side of a grave-stone. Moses P. Handy is another man very popular over there for his after-dinner orations ; and if Jimmy Husted, the " Bald Eagle of West- chester," ever cares to change his occupation, he can make his fortune in a short time by going to England and making speeches. The English are simply amazed at the quickness and readiness of Americans at speech-making and repartee. No Englisman cares to compete with one of them at the dinner-table. Of course they have all heard of Chauncey Depew, and some of his good stories I heard over there for the first time. One which was repeated to me frequently was as follows: " When I was about fourteen years of age, my father lived on an old farm at Poughkeepsie. One day, after I had worked very hard at a five-acre field of corn, I begged permission and money to go to the circus. While I Avas there I saw a spotted coach-dog which took my fancy, and, as I had enough money left, I 202 The People I've Smiled With : bought him and took him home. My father, who was an old Puritan, and had read of Jacob's little game with the sheep of Laban, said to me, * Chauncey, I don't want any spot- ted dogs on this farm ; they'll drive the cattle crazy and spoil the breed ! ' Next day it chanced to rain, and I took the dog out into the woods to try him on a coon, but to my great astonishment the rain washed all the spots off of him. I took the dog back to the circus man who sold him to me and told him that all the spots had washed off. 'Great Scott ! ' said the fellow, with an affectation of surprise. 'There was an umbrella went with that dog to keep him dry. Didn't you get it?'" The English like the optimistic style of our speakers, and were hugely pleased with the retort ascribed to a little fellow who had no feet and, whom a lot of his neighbors set up in business as a newsdealer in Harlem, providing him with a barrel in which to sit and hang his stumps so that the wind should not strike them. One day, when the blizzard was raging violently, he went on selling newspapers as cheerily as if nothing was occurring. Finally a friend came along and said to him : " Hello, Charley, how is business?" " Well," said the Recolleciions of a A ferry Li file Life. 203 little fellow, looking down to the place where his feet ought to be, " I aint kickin'." Bret Harte was long one of the famous after- dinner speakers in London. I have heard that Bret's printed stories are written with great care, leisure, and deliberation, but in London he always succeeded in saying something entirely new and on the spur of the moment. He set a whole table laughing once by telling of an Irishman who lost his way in a large city and was driving up and down in his cart, which was drawn by a small mule. The fellow looked so woe-begone that some one shouted to him from the sidewalk and asked him where he was going. " I don't know," said he, ** ask the mule." Another after-dinner story that people do not tire of over there was about a German re- visiting his native country, who was questioned a great deal by one of the native princes. Said the prince: "Hans, have you any circus riders in America ? " " Yes," was the reply, " we've got lots of them ; who is your greatest rider in Germany ? " " Oh, Hans Wagner ; he is the greatest rider you ever saw in your life." " Well," said the returned emigrant, " I'll bet he aint much to what we've got in America. Now, there's Jim Robinson, I've seen him run 204 The People I've Smiled With: along and jump off a horse's back and on again four or five times." " Oh, that's noth- ing," said the prince, " Hans Wagner does that every day for practice." " But I've seen Robinson jump on a horse going at full speed and stand with one foot on his tail." " Yes, but Hans Wagner did that when he was a young man the first time he tried." " Well, but I've seen Jimmy Robinson run into a ring and run twice around with the horse, and then jump and land right on the horse's breath." " Well, Hans Wagner, he — see here, my man, that's a lie; I don't believe that." Some of Horace Porter's stories are repeated over there with great gusto. One of them was carried over from here, having been given after the dinner on the looth night of the " Taming of the Shrew," at Mr. Daly's Theatre. It was a story of Sherman's march to the sea. It seems that Sherman used to go out of his way to avoid bridges, and was very fond of fords. One day the army was to ford a river, but for miles before they reached it they waded knee- deep in a swamp, and one soldier finally said to another, ** Bill, I guess we've struck this river lengthwise." Porter's story of the man who was always on time also amused the Eng- lish immensely. It seems this fellow kept a Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 205 sort of schedule of his day's proceedings. He would arise in the morning at a certain time, go to bed at a certain time, eat his meals at a certain time, and dress at a certain time, and was so methodical that his watch was in his hand a great deal of the time. One day his wife died. At the funeral, as the remains were lowered into the grave the bereaved husband wiped his weeping eyes, swallowed a sob or two, took out his watch, looked at it, and murmured : " Just a quarter past two ; got her in on time." In England they are very fond of repeating stories told by Mark Twain, Bill Nye, and James Whitcomb Riley, and I don't wonder at it, for there are few men who better under- stand the art. They don't resemble each other much more than my esteemed friends, T. De Witt Talmage and Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, but each talks for all he is worth and gets there every time. Mark Twain trans- gresses all precedents by spinning out a story to an immense length, yet every one is sorry when he sits down. Bill Nye gets upon his feet so full of what he is going to say that it oozes all out over his good-natured face and still has considerable overflow for the top of his shining bald head, jRiley tells his story in 2o6 The People I've Smiled With: a most leisurely and quiet manner that sug- gests a great deal of reserve force, but when he gets to the point he does it so sharply and skilfully that the audience is astounded for an instant, and when they do catch on the ap- plause is terrific. He can mix the humorous and pathetic more skilfully than any man I ever heard. He told me once of a little fellow who had a curvature of the spine. He made the story intensely pathetic until I began to feel for my handkerchief, but when he ex- plained how the little chap was as proud of his deformity as a colored man would be of a new suit of clothes, I nearly exploded. I dfdn't know whether I was crying or laughing. Although it isn't to the point of American after-dinner speaking, I want to record just here a story I have heard about Riley out in Union City, Indiana, where he turned up once as a painter. The proprietor of the hotel there called my attention to the sign overhead his door, and said : " Do you see that sign ? " "Yes," said I. "Well," said he, " that was painted by James Whitcomb Riley, the poet, who in those days was called the blind painter of Indiana. They called him blind because when he went up on a ladder he traced the outlines of the letter so very slowly, and filled Recollections of a Merry LUtle Life. 207 them in so carefully, that you hardly could see that he was working at all ; yet, all of a sud- den, the whole sign was done, and it was the best work of the kind in the State of Indi- ana ! " Riley tells stories just exactly as he painted the sign. If the English want to know how well our people can tell after-dinner stories, however, they ought to come over here and drop into some of the New York clubs, and hear Judge Brady and Judge Noah Davis and David Dud- ley Field, and some other men who to the gen- eral public are as solemn as obituary notices. When these men do find time for recreation and let themselves loose, they do it in magnifi- cent style. Once up at the Lambs' Club Judge Brady, who was then the shepherd of that pas- toral institution, took exception to something that was said about the public being unable to understand big words. "Any one can un- derstand a big word," said he. " Why, a little while ago, in front of J. M. Hill's cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg, two Irishmen stopped, and one of them, looking up at the round building, asked the other, 'What is this ? * ' This is a cyclorama,' said Pat. * A what? 'asked Mike. *A cyclorama.' 'Well, and what's a cyclorama ? ' ' Don't you know 2o8 The People I've Smiled With. what a cyclorama is?* ' Indade I don't.' * Well, cyclorama is dude language for gas- house.' " When, however, you want to hear some of the best American speaking at the shortest notice, you want to get yourself into a crowd of newspaper men. For particulars see next chapter. CHAPTER XXI. Newspaper Men are Reliable Smilers. — John Cocker- ill. — General Sherman Explains. — Some of Cocker- ill's Yarns. — Amos Cummings. — Some of his Stories. — Joe Howard Brings Down the House. — Willie Win- ter. — Henry Guy Carleton on Commercial Travel- ers. — Bob Morris. — Joe Clarke. — John Reed. — Will Starks. — George Williams. — The Press Club. — The Fellowcraft. Among the men Avho can always be de- pended upon to smile with a man and say the best things at the shortest notice, the journal- ists of New York City are pre-eminent. It takes a great deal of good stuff to make one journalist, but after the work is done the re- sults are so admirable that the reader would not object to spoiling a hundred or so ordi- nary beings for the sake of turning out one first-class newspaper man. The qualifications of a man in a prominent position in journalism are so numerous that it would be hard to mention and classify them. Every American thinks himself able to edit a newspaper, and I don't know that many of 209 2IO The People I've Stniled With: them are mistaken ; but among foreigners I cannot recall at this instant more than two who would be equal to the demands of the New York press were they not otherwise engaged at the present time : one is the Pope and the other is Bismarck. To name all the clever fellows who are sup- plying the world with news, yet find time to be cheerful with any half-way decent fellow who comes along, would take more space than the entirety of this book, even if the names were set in double columns in directory style. Of course they are not all in New York. I never yet reached the town that had a news- paper of any account without finding at least one good fellow of the journalist fraternity, but naturally I am best acquainted with those who say things through the medium of the press of the metropolis. Among the crowd is my friend Col. Cock- erill. It is astonishing how little the world knows about some men whose names are on every one's lips. A little while ago I actually heard an intelligent American allude to Cocker- ill as having gained his rank in the Confederate Army. There were plenty of good fellows, I have no doubt, in the Confederate Army ; in fact, I have met a great many of them in Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 211 recent years ; but as for Cockerill, — well, allow me to reproduce a story by Gen. Sherman, told at the Press Club ; it runs thus, as nearly as I can remember the General's words : " If you fellows would promise not to sing ' March- ing through Georgia ' I'll tell you a little story. I came here to the Press Club to-night espe- cially to pay my respects to your president, Col. Cockerill. I presume most of you don't know what it is to stand in the position of a man having charge of the lives of one hundred thousand men. Fortunately or unfortunately, I do. Some years ago, down at the little village of Paducah, Ohio, the 17th Ohio Regi- men reported to me. Cockerill was in that regiment as a drummer boy. His father was there too. The boy got his education in Vir- ginia, but he was true to the nation. He stood heavy fire in those days, and that is what made him so staunch a friend. He went ahead, right straight along, as he has been doing ever since. As the sins of the father go down to the fourth generation, as the Bible says, it is a comfort to realize that the virtues go down too. His father was a splendid man, and his son is a chip out of the old block. I know him to be a fellow of the right stamp, and I congratulate you on having chosen him for your president. 212 The People I've Smiled With: I believe he is about forty years old. I hope he will live to be forty more." I guess these remarks dispose of the story which a good many people were inclined to believe, that the Colonel won his rank in the Confederate Army. Like all the other smart fellows of the world, Cockerill can't hear of anything without being reminded of a story ; the last one he told me was about two Englishmen who had been rich but later became so severely reduced in cir- cumstances that one became a waiter in a shilling restaurant in London and the other had became reduced to a shilling and hadn't had anything to eat for a day or two. Finally, when he reached the point where he had either to give up his shilling or give up his life, he went into a restaurant to get a dinner, and found his old comrade there waiting on the the table. " 'Pon my word," said he, " it's very hard, old friend, for me to see you here as low down as this, — actually a waiter in a shilling restaurant." " Yes, old chappie," said the other cheerily, " it's pretty hard to be a waiter here, I confess, but all the same I've never got down so low that I have had to eat my dinner here." One of Cockerill's stories has gone all over the country in print. I have heard many Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 2 1 3 stories with double meanings, but I never be- fore struck any which were as doubly suggest- ive as are some of his. Another famous story-teller on the New York press — he is also a Member of Congress — is Amos Cummings. Some one was telling about having been mixed up in a discussion over abstract principles where hairs were split and split until each of the principals lost entire sight of the original point he was aiming at. It reminded Amos of this story: An Irishman walked up to the refreshment stand of a rail- way station and said to the young lady, "What have you got there?" "Apples," she said. "How much?" "Five cents apiece." He took an apple in his hand, looked at another plate of fruit, and said : " What's these?" "Oranges, sir." "How much are they ? " " Five cents each." " Same price as the apples?" "Yes." "Would you mind givin' me an orange for this apple?" " You are quite welcome," says she, " to exchange them." He took the orange and ate it, and was going out, when the young woman shouted, " Wont you pay for it ? " " Pay for what ? " says Pat. " Why, for the orange, to be sure." " Why, I gave you the apple for the orange." " Yes, sir, but you haven't paid for the apple." 214 The People I've Sfniled With .- " Well, I gave you back the apple, what do you want, — the whole earth ? " I have heard a great deal about the imagi- native faculty in Irishmen, but I never knew it better delineated than by Amos Cummings when he told of an Irishman who was wheeling a heavy barrel up a road and some one said to him, " Mike, what have you in that barrel?" " Well, sor," was the reply, " upon my word I don't know. One side of it says Rye Whiskey and the other's marked Pat Duffy." ' Joe Howard is another famous newspaper man in the metropolis. I could scarcely tell to what paper he is attached if I tried, — he writes for so many. Joe has a dome of thought resembling that of the late lamented William Shakespeare, a resemblance to which his moustache and goatee tellingly contribute. I suppose he is pretty well along in years, as he has several married children, but his spirits are about eighteen years of age and grow younger every moment while he talks. He not only can tell a first-rate story, but he can turn some other man's story in a direction which the original owner never would have imagined. One day, over at the Press Club, my dear old friend Peter Cooper, of sainted memory, was giving the boys some good Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 215 advice. He knew that newspaper men worked very hard, earned a great deal of money, spent it freely,and he wanted to give them a practical hint, so he told them that one of the most use- ful things in the world to a young man, after a good character, was a bank account. Even if he contributed to it very slowly he would find it a tower of strength and a source of comfort. I know that his remarks had upon a number of members the effect which he de- sired, nevertheless I was amused when Joe Howard popped up and remarked : " I wish to add the weight of my testimony, such as it is, to that which our venerable and esteemed friend has so kindly given us. A few years ago he said to me just what he has said to all of you to-night, and impressed me so powerfully that I went out and opened a bank account at once. I have it yet. Yes, gentlemen, I am happy to say I have it yet. It has been about $400 overdrawn for two years ; still, that bank account is mine." Even Mr. Cooper had to laugh then. Willie Winter is another one of the wits of the New York press. He is a very solemn- looking fellow, and I have heard that he con- fines his humourous exuberance to the columns of the newspaper on whose staff he has been a 2i6 The People I've Smiled With: valuable contributor for a good many years, but the only time I ever heard him speak in public he was quite equal to the occasion. It was a dinner at which General Sherman presided. My name was on the list, but perhaps the General had mislaid his glasses, for instead of calling for Wilder he named Winter. Winter, who had seen the list himself, arose and re- marked gravely : " I had found myself almost entirely forgotten here, but General Sherman, who never yet disappointed any expectations which were made of him, looked for me in the person of my esteemed friend, Marshall Wilder. I was not in the least disappointed. It re- minded me of an old yarn about a negro preacher who used to open a Bible at random when he went into the pulpit, and one day he stumbled on a chapter which is the terror of young people who attempt to commit the Bible to memory, and read as follows : * And unto Enoch was born Irad, and Irad forgot Mehu- jael, and Mehujael forgot Methusael, and Methusael forgot Lamech, and Lamech took unto him two wives and forgot Jabal. — Now, my beloved bruddern, dis text am meant to show you firstly dat dem old patriarchs, dey was mighty forgitful.' Never mind about the rest." Recollections of a Merty Little Life. 217 Henry Guy Carleton is another clever news- paper man. He used to be an officer of the regular army, and his sketches of army life on the border, published a few years ago in the New York Times, are so killingly funny that I have never been able to understand why they didn't appear afterward in book form, so that people could laugh over them not only for a day but for all time. The first I heard of Carleton was at a dinner of the Commercial Travellers' Club. I did my best when my turn came to speak, for I knew those travellers were a re- markably smart set of fellows, and knew more about chestnuts than all the Italians who infest our street corners combined. I did the best I could. Joe Howard also made a tremendous hit. Carleton couldn't go, but he sent a letter which put the assemblage in fits. It is as follows : "Will L. Heyer : — "Dear Sir: I pen these few lines with a soul full of emotion, sorrowing that I cannot be with you to-night, I feel that by staying away from the large, long feed to which you so kindly invited me, I am losing the one opportunity of my life to get square with the drummers. During my long and variable career as a private citizen I have travelled a great deal, but I have never yet seen a real live drummer. I 2i8 The People I've Smiled With: have often heard of him, but he was always about ten minutes ahead of me. All the best rooms were occupied when I arrived, and the affections of the prettiest girls had all been placed. I never got a lower berth on a train but once, and that was when a drummer, who had got in ahead of me, gave it up so that he could offer his condolences to a poor little orphan girl, aged about twenty-five years, in another car, who was on her way to join her parents in Kankakee. I once paid $4 a day in Denver where I was shown up to room 947 on the eighth floor, with a cracked mirror, no soap, one towel, a package of insect powder, and a bureau with no handles on it, while the blue-eyed drummer with gold filling in his front teeth who arrived just before me got the best chamber for $2, with ten per cent, off for cash. But let this pass ; I have noticed that drummers are always complaining of loss of appetite, but I have also observed that there is seldom anything left after they get through, except the cut-glass pickle dish, four corks, and the mustard. I would be a drummer myself, but my intimate friends say that I am not shy and retiring enough ; they say also that I talk too much. "Yours very truly, " Henry Guy Carleton." Bob Morris is also noted in the journalistic fraternity as a story-teller. Bob is very lame in both feet and needs a thick cane to help him Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 219 along. He ought to have a medal of honor big enough to cover his entire breast and hang all over him beside, for many years ago, when he was an athletic young sailor and ofificer in the merchant marine, both his feet were frozen on account of his heroic endeavors to save the lives of some of his messmates who were in danger of drowning, during a wreck. The dis- ability didn't reach his head, however ; it didn't even get up to his heart, for Bob is always bub- bling over with good stories. In recent years he has written several plays, and I am glad to say he is on the high road to success. I don't know of any one who more richly deserves it. Joe Clarke is another famous story-teller. His duties as managing editor confine him very closely to his desk, but when any acquaintance chances to catch him on the elevated train be- tween his ofifice and his house they are sure of getting a good story, and probably half a dozen. Joe is one of the few men who look as if hard work agreed with them. He is rotund, smooth- faced, bright-eyed, has a fine complexion, and like his hearty admirer, the author, never drinks anything stronger than water. Another famous fellow for good stories is John Reed. John has done so much long and steady work as a "managing editor that his ac- 2 20 The People I've Smiled With: quaintances have been able to catch him only about as they catch angels' visits — that is, un- awares ; but after two o'clock at night, or rather in the morning, when the paper is made up, John will sit down at any of the all-night soda fountains and tell stories as long as any one else will prompt him by telling stories them- selves. He doesn't allow anyone to get ahead of him. Will Starks has about as large a collection of good stories as any man on the New York press, and he makes them all the better by telling them with as solemn a face as if he were a Presby- terian minister warning his hearers to flee from the wrath to come. Bill looks to be about thirty-five years of age, but as he was a famous war correspondent twenty-five years ago, and a most effective cavalry officer before that, I guess he must have found the fountain of youth somewhere. When he recalls a first-rate thing from his memories of every State of the Union, and some foreign countries besides, he does not, like some men I know, go out at once to find some one to try it on, but he writes it out, puts it in print, and modestly but hypocritically credits it to some other newspaper. Bill knows as much about Cuba and Mexico as most men do about the United States. He is a rich mine Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 221 of war reminiscences, but never gives up a war story unless it is dragged out of him by main force. When that occurs, however, it is safe for the listeners to loosen a vest-button or two and draw a full breath. Should any man be pining for a war story, and can't get one anywhere else, he can be ac- commodated by applying in proper manner to George F. Williams, who will be pleasantly re- called by every one when I say it was he who devised and managed the children's excursions which were such a delightful indication of New York's big heart a few years ago. George also was a soldier and war correspondent, and al- though sometimes he grew very weary through lack of sleep during the discharge of the serious duties incumbent upon him, his memory was never weakened in the slightest degree. He knew every general in the army, always got his copy in on time, never did any padding, and yet heard every good story that was told in any department of our great army. Still more, he could always find time to drop in wherever there were any prisoners of war and catalogue the jokes that were current on the other side. George is almost as tall as the late lamented General Scott, has splendid broad shoulders, and honorably wears the old " knapsack stoop " 2 22 The People I've Smiled With. of the volunteer army, although he quickly earned shoulder straps and an enviable rank, which he resigned solely for the purpose of going back to his first love, which was the jour- nalistic profession. The New York newspaper men have two clubs — the Press Club and the Fellowcraft, the latter being so high-toned and exclusive that there's many a millionnaire who hasn't influence enough to pass its doors. That's all right, though ; if newspaper men don't deserve a cozy, quiet place of retreat, I don't know who docs. CHAPTER XXII. Some Points of Business. — No Trick about It. — A Mat- ter OF Long Practice. — My Earliest Appearance. — Joe Jefferson. — A Gallows for a Stage. — Buffalo Bill with Red Hair. — My Friends the Newsboys. — I Learned Something from Talmage. — A Hint to Preachers, —Marcus Spring's Story. — The Boston Common Incident Adapted. Among my best friends — those who are most heartily pleased at all success which I have achieved in my profession — are a number who are more and more surprised, as time goes on, that I get along as well as I do. They are not in the business themselves, so they look on from afar off and imagine there is some trick about it in some way. I have heard people talk the same way after listening to Patti sing through an opera requiring great abilities in acting, vocalization, and facial ex- pression, and wonder how she succeeded in getting everything " down fine." There is nothing wonderful about it to me, for she went on the stage at a very early age. I am told her first appearance was during her third year, when she was carried on in a child's part. 323 2 24 The People I've Smiled With: Well, begging pardon for comparing myself in any way with so incomparable an artist as Madame Patti, I want to explain to my friends that I didn't jump suddenly into the business which now occupies most of my time. I had a long preparatory course of an irregular na- ture. I have already alluded to the barn the- atrical company which I managed when I was a small boy, but I lookback to those days with considerable satisfaction, for they set me to thinking about how to secure an effect upon an audience, and the habit then formed has never left me. My first attempt, however, to amuse the pub- lic was made still earlier. I was only about eight years of age when the people in the rural district in which I lived planned an en- tertainment. They played Mary Queen of Scots. Your stalwart American backwoods- man has a faculty of always trying the hardest thing first ; that is why he develops into such a splendid fellow. When Mary came upon the stage with the headsman, the property- man had failed to remember that an axe was necessary, in keeping up the illusion, and the performance had to wait while they sent out and borrowed a meat-axe from the nearest butcher. Everybody in the vicinity knew that Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 225 meat-axe at sight, and as the headsman took it and stalked across the stage very solemnly, to chills-and-fever music by the local band, 1 shouted out : " Save me a spare-rib ! " That scene was a failure for the company, but as my first attempt at wit it made a tremendous success, which so pleased me that I have ever since had my mind running on that sort of thing. My first appearance on the professional stage was made at Roberts' Opera House, Hartford, when I was a school-boy in that town. Joe Jefferson came there to play Rip Van Winkle, and, as every one remembers, he makes his first appearance in the play with a child on his back and a number of other children following. It was always desirable to secure a youngster who was not very heavy, to sit on Rip's shoulders, yet old enough not to be frightened at the applause with which the scene is always greeted. I was always hanging about that opera house, and frequently suc- ceeded, being very short, in hiding under a seat so that I could be in the house without a ticket before the performance began. The janitor knew this trick of mine, and thought he might as well make use of me in some way to pay expenses, so he selected me on one 226 The People I've Smiled With: occasion as the boy to sit on Jefferson's shoul- ders. Then I considered myself in luck. I reached the theatre at half-past six, — an hour and a half too early, so as to be sure to be there on time. Jefferson arrived late, and was kind enough to ask me into his dressing-room, and perhaps my mouth and eyes weren't wide opened as I saw him make up for his part ! Finally, he said, " Now, little fellow," and stooped down. I jumped upon his back, and off he started for the stage. The instant he appeared there was a tremendous round of applause, which I, with the customary modesty of childhood, imagined was intended entirely for me. A happier boy never lived. This experience made me so in love with the theatre that I again began to give dramatic entertainments myself. I couldn't hire a hall, and the janitor cruelly refused me the use of the opera house, but where there is a will there is a way. The old Hartford Jail had a garret in the top of the building, and the jailer's family lived on the floor beneath it ; the jailer's son was a friend of mine, and as fond of theatricals as I, so we used to give entertainments up in that garret. The town gallows, when not in use, was kept up there, Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 227 and we rigged that up as a stage and hung a curtain in front of it. When Buffalo Bill visited Hartford with Ned Buntline's com- pany fifteen or twenty years ago, my friend and I saw him as often as possible, and re- membered all we could of the play ; then we would give it, to a carefully selected audience- up in that garret. The jailer's son played Buffalo Bill's part ; he had fiery red hair, which was cut very short ; consequently he did not resemble Bill very much, but between our histrionic ability and the extra attraction of our playing from the gallows from which some men had been hung, we succeeded in ex- torting five cents for every ticket. Even at this late day I don't hesitate to say the show was worth the money. I'd give a hundred times as much now to see a lot of boys go through the same performance from so sugges- tive a stage. Having been a boy, and not so very long ago either, I have a great deal of sympathy with the youngsters and hearty fondness for them. No part of my professional duties has been more pleasant than that of entertaining newsboys and bootblacks in New York, as I do frequently. What delights me most about it is that my juvenile audiences never forget 2 28 The People I've Smiled With : me. I had an amusing and touching illustra- tion of it not very long ago. I was at the foot of the elevated railway stairs at Chambers Street trying to get up. There was a great crowd there, and a very big fellow, not noticing me, pushed me aside. Instantly two newsboys rushed up, and one of them shouted : " See here ; don't you shove that little fellow or knock him around; that's Wilder the humourist, and when you hit him you hit us." The man turned around, and when he could bend his neck enough to look down to where I was he said pleasantly: "Beg pardon, Mr. Wilder; I didn't see you." But the boys were not quick to accept his explanation ; their lips were rolled out, and their teeth exposed plainly, until the big fellow took me under his wing and guarded me safely all the way up the stairs. While my juvenile head was full of dramatic projects and possibilities, I got an important lesson from the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage. I know that he is not a professor in the school of acting, nevertheless you can learn something from anybody if you will take the trouble to listen and not be conceited. He came to Rochester once when I was a school-boy there, and was to lecture at Corinthian Hall. I hap- pened to be hanging about there during the Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 229 afternoon when he dropped in to look at the place where he was to speak, and he saw me and patted me on the head and said : "Well, my little man, are you coming to hear my lecture to-night?" I looked up and said: "Well, sir; I don't think your lecture will be entertaining to boys." "You don't, eh," he laughed ; " why, what am I myself but a boy ? " That caught me, so I went there that evening and enjoyed the lecture very much. I looked at him all the while. I couldn't possibly help it, for I was curious every minute, almost every second, to see what he would do next. He was never quiet. He talked with his face as much as with his tongue, and he put in a good deal of work with his hands, with his feet, and all the rest of his body. He was all over that plat- form at least sixty times in the course of the hour in which he spoke, and I heartily approve of everything he did. I got the idea there, which some conscientious readers and recita- tionists seem to have missed all their lives, that when a man has a good thing to get off he must not trust it entirely to his tongue. That is just the difference between acting and preaching. I learned it during that even- ing, and I never forgot to act accordingly. There is scarcely a thing that I say on the 23° The People I've Smile d With: stage or platform which has not been said by a great many other people, but I help my tongue along to the best of my ability with face, eyes, cheeks, hands, and feet. There is everything in the way a thing is put. If there wasn't, a school dialogue would be as good as one of Booth's tragedies or Daly's comedies. I have seen some atrocious plays draw for a hundred successive nights in New York, not for anything that the author had said or done, but because of the ability of the artists. A great many preachers now living could profit as much as I did by studying Talmage for a little while. The difference reminds me of a story which the late Marcus Spring of New Jersey, a gentle- man who left a most enviable reputation be- hind him for geniality and courtesy, used to tell about an old colored woman who lived in his vicinity. Spring was quite a persistent church-goer, and one day he was astonished to see this old woman get in an ecstacy of smiles and tears over a very poor sermon, — a sermon by one of the old-fashioned pulpit-pounding, Gospel-chewing preachers, whose sermons have as much verbiage and little sense as a dic- tionary after it has been ground to bits in a coffee-mill. Said Mr. Spring: "Auntie, I Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 231 don't see why you make such a fuss over what that man said to you. If you are affected by that sort of thing, I believe I could make you cry and shout by simply saying, * See that rabbit run across that field ! ' She resented the imputation, so I immediately struck a pul- pit attitude and in my most impressive manner repeated the words given above. Sure enough, the old woman burst into a flood of tears and got off several pious ejaculations. ' There,' said I, 'didn't I tell you I could do it?' 'Yes, Massa Spring,' said she, 'you did, but, — oh, you didn't tell me you was goin' to put de heavenly twang into it. Dat's what took me, massa.' " One of my most successful appearances was in imitation of a historic character dear to all small boys ; I allude to the spokesman of that crowd of little Bostonians who went to Gen, Howe once during the British occupation of Boston and protested against the abridgement of their liberties to the extent of playing on Boston Common. Right beside our school in Rochester was a bit of ground on which we boys used to play ball, but an old German living near by protested against the game because we made so much noise and disturbed him. I guess he drank too much beer, and had a bad 232 The People I've Smiled With. stomach. The old fellow went to police head- quarters, and an order was issued from there that the boys should stop playing ball on that ground. We fellows held a wrathful consulta- tion, and it was decided that something should be done. Recalling the Boston incident, it was agreed that we should make an appeal to the Mayor. A committee of four was appointed, and I was selected, as spokesman. We went to the Mayor's office, and I stated the case to Mayor Parsons. My heart was in my mouth all the while, but the boys said I did splendidly, and I guess I did, for the Mayor compelled the police to rescind their order. Before that the boys didn't seem to think much of me, because I couldn't work and wasn't equal to all the onerous duties of ball playing, but after that I was the biggest man at the school. To my great delight, last summer, at Saratoga, I met Mayor Parsons and recalled the incident. He remembered it at once, and we had a hearty laugh over it. CHAPTER XXIII. Part of My Pay.— The Fun I Get from My Hearers. — They Asked for My Father. — A Thrifty Hebrew. — No Creed ABOUT Money. — Expected to Parade. — Some Great-hearted Philadelphians. — A Blind Orchestra. — Cabmen's Jokes. — Carl Zerrahn's Predicament. — Taming a Bear. — Mind reading. Since I succeeded in becoming pretty well known as a man who makes people smile, I have received very good pay, better, I suspect sometimes, than I deserve, but a great deal of my compensation comes out of the fun which I stumble upon unexpectedly in the course of my work. It is not always fun ; for instance, sometimes when I give an entertainment for the benefit of a Sunday-school or church, and the church build- ing itself is the place in which I am to speak, the minister will come to me and say : " Now, Mr. Wilder, you must be very careful ; please remember that this a church. I hope you will select your words very carefully while you are on the platform." It isn't specially inspiring to have this sort of thing said just as you " go on." 233 234 The People I've Smiled With : There is no end to the funny incidents that come to me through my smallness of stature. I remember going to one town and, on landing at the station, finding nobody there but two men who were looking around in a helpless manner. One of them finally said to the other: "Well, I guess he isn't coming; I don't know what we're going to do ; the only passenger that came off that train was that little boy there. I guess we'll have to go up and get the dominie to make a speech, and then get the choir to sing Moody and Sankey hymns or some- thing. I'll never engage another of them lecturers to come down from New York City again. There's that whole town-hall full of people by this time, and they are all going to be disappointed." I went up to him and said : "Are you one of the lecture committee?" "Yes," said he, " My name is Brown." " Well," said I, " my name is Wilder." " Oh," said he, " it is, eh ? Well, sonny, where is your dad ?" Some entertainment committees act, regard- ing their financial engagements, in a way that reminds me of an enterprising Hebrew who once came to engage me. He said : " Mr. Wild- er, I want to give an entertainment to some of my friends, and I'd stand five or ten dollars to have you there to say something. Have Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 235 you anything to do next Monday night ? " "No," said I, "but my price is fifty dollars." "Oh, well," said he, " that's all right as a rule, but if you haven't got anything to do Monday night, why don't you come? You'll be ten dollars ahead." Still I declined. " Well," he argued, " if you don't come, like as not you'll go to the theatre and take a lady with you, and spend five or ten dollars, and you'll miss the ten dollars you might have got from me ; then you'll be fifteen or twenty dollars out. Now, I don't care about a few dollars ; I'll make it twenty." " No," said I, " I can't cut rates, it won't be fair to other fellows in the business, I won't go for less than fifty." " Well," said he, " I guess I can fix it in some way ; tell you what I'll do ; I wont give the company any- thing to drink; that will leave me five dollars ahead ; I'll make it twenty-five for you." " No," said I, " my price is fifty; I must stick to it." Finally he said : " Well, tell you how I'll fix it. I wont give the company anything to eat ; so I can afford to give you the fifty dollars." The engagement consequently was closed. Af- ter the entertainment was over, the host took me aside, and handed me forty dollars. " See here," said I, " I've kept my part of the agree- ment ; why don't you keep yours ? My terms 236 The People I've Smiled With : were fifty dollars." Then he handed me a ten- dollar bill, and said : " Oh, pshaw ! Can't you take a joke? " I met another Hebrew, a first-rate fellow too, at the Narragansett Hotel in Providence once. He happened to know my friend, J. M. Hill, the theatrical manager, who was in town at that time, and he asked Hill, " Isn't that Wild- er?" "Yes," said Mr. Hill, introducing us. " Mr. Wilder," said he, " I want to hear you. I've been trying for a long time : I'm going to do itthe first opportunity." " Well," said Hill, " Mr. Wilder's going to read here to-night." "What! right here in Providence? I'll go to hear him ; I don't care what it costs. Where's he going to read?" "At the Young Men's Christian Association," replied Mr. Hill. "Oh," said the fellow, "they wont let me in there, I'm a Hebrew." Mr. Hill laid his left hand on the fellow's shoulder, shook the fore- finger of his right hand impressively, and said, with the most solemn expression in the world : " My friend, there isn't any creed about money." At another place I had posted my lithograph " ads." all around town, and on each of them were copies of photographs of my face, in dif- ferent characters and in different parts of my RecoUecimis of a Merry Little Life. 237 entertainments. I am rather proud of these pictures, for I make it a point never to put on the same face twice in succession in an evening. A countryman came up to me and said, "Are you the show?" "Yes,"' said I. " Be them your pictures there ? " I said yes. " Well, when are you going to make your parade?" He had seen all the faces, and he thought that they meant as many different men. He didn't mean to compliment me, I suppose, but I took it as such, and went off patting myself on the back. I meet a great many good men as well as odd ones in my trips about the country, and one of them is Mr. Clarkson, the great Philadel- phia clothier, who employs thousands of peo- ple, and each month gives them an entertain- ment, for which purpose he hires the Academy of Music. The artists whom he engages are not those who can be picked up for little money, but the very best singers, lecturers, and other performers that can be found, the enter- tainment being free to all his employees. In the summer time he gives them excursions. I said to him once, " Mr. Clarkson, this sort of thing must cost you a great deal of money." "Yes," said he, " it does, but it all comes back to me, though I never expected it when I began. My employees are an appreciative lot of people, 238 The People I've Smiled With : and I believe they pay a great deal more atten- tion to my business from finding me interested in them." Another man of the same kind is Mr. Stet- son, proprietor of a great hat factory in Phil- adelphia. A peculiar feature of the little orchestra which he maintains is that all the performers are blind. I have heard a great many orchestras, but I must say those fellows put more soul into their music than I ever heard from any others. A touching incident occurred there one night when I chanced to be the entertainer. I was reciting a sketch called " The Surgeon's Story," at which a fire is spoken of, and I suppose I must have done it pretty well, for the audience was thoroughly worked up. One of the lines read: " The corporal's quarters is all on fire." At that moment, it being the time of the Cen- tennial celebration, a number of fireworks in an adjoining street were let ofT, and the inevitable lunatic who is to be found in every audience got up and shouted " Fire ! " There was a general stampede. I turned to the blind or- chestra, and said: "Be entirely quiet ; there is no need for alarm ; there is no fire here." The instant I spoke the poor fellows began playing to keep the audience quiet, and succeeded. I Recollectio7ts of a Merry Little Life. 239 never before or since took such satisfaction in any one's accepting my word for exactly what it was worth. I have had a great deal of fun out of the cab- men of London, Dublin, and other European towns. Cab-fares are small over there. A fellow who has to kill time can do it a great deal cheaper riding around in a cab than by loung- ing in a bar-room and drinking with his friends. One day when I happened to have got a great deal of copper in change, I made up my mind to relieve myself of extra weight by paying the cabby in pennies. His fare was eighteen pence; so, taking a handful of copper from my pocket, I counted it over very carefully, begin- ning, " One, two, three," etc., aloud. As I looked up the cabby was regarding me with a mixture of pity and contempt, and as I handed him his fare he said between his teeth : " You've been savin' up a long time, haven't you, sonny ? " Another time, after riding around in a cab on a rainy day, I said to the cabman on dismounting at my hotel, " Mike, are you wet?" '* Well, sor," he replied, "if I was as wet outside as I am inside, I'd be as dry as a bone." I'm a temperance man myself, but that fellow didn't remain dry a minute longer. One of the most amusing and at the same 240 The People I've Smiled With : time most dreadful times that I ever had in the business was when I went up to New England to a musical convention of which the noted Carl Zerrahn of Boston was the leader. What he doesn't know about music would be hard for any one else to find out ; but he didn't know anything about me, and the more he inquired the more he was bothered to know what to do with me in the entertainment. I had been en- gaged by the management, and would have to be paid, so I ought to appear; but whenever my name was upon the programme, and I went on the stage, all the good temper was taken out of Mr. Zerrahn for at least half an hour, and he would mutter to some of the musicians about him : " Dis will never do ; dis man breaks de programme all up." Finally he came to me and said : " Mr. Vilder, vhen you come up here again and go on de programme, vill you please tell me vhat you vant to do, and den do it all at vonce ? I'll vait, no matter how long it is." I told him that I'd been sent there to make people laugh, and I was obliged to do it, but I was sorry for him. It reminded me of the days when I was at school, and the children didn't like to appear after me on ex- hibition-day, because I'd make them laugh and break them all up. They used to complain to Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 241 the teacher that " Marshall Wilder was making faces." I am a good-natured man, and purpose to be cheerful on all occasions, but once in a while I meet some one whom I have to sit down upon. I am not very heavy, but all the weight there is to me I try to drop on a single spot. Once, in the Catskills, where I was to give an entertainment, I saw an old gentleman with four charming daughters seated about him. As I passed them, he chanced to pick up one of my programmes, and he said : " Oh, is that homely little fellow to give an entertainment here to-night ? " (I am perfectly willing to admit that I am not quite as handsome as Bill Nye.) One of the girls replied. "Yes, he's going to recite ' Asleep at the Switch,' among other things." " Well," said he, loud enough for me to hear, and apparently for the purpose of my hearing it, " I wont go to hear him ; if I have heard that once I've heard it a hun- dred times." I went right up to him and said: "What's that you say about 'Asleep at the Switch?'" "Who are you?" he asked. " My name is Marshall P. Wilder," said I, "and I heard your remark about my pro- gramme. I don't care whether you come to hear me at all. You're a bear. Suppose you 242 The People I've Smiled With : have heard * Asleep at the Switch ' a hun- dred times. Haven't you heard the Lord's Prayer a hundred times as often ? And if you have, do you object to hearing that again? There is a good deal in the way that a thing is done. I claim to recite 'Asleep at the Switch ' well, but I don't want you to come and hear me. I don't want to see your face in the house to-night ; it will make me ill, I can't stand it." Well, as I went in that night there in one of the front seats sat that very man. I gave him a look as much as say, " I thought I told you to keep away from here ? " The audience, many of whom had heard the conversation of the afternoon, seemed to translate my face at once, and there was a general titter all over the house. Whether they were laughing at me or at him I don't know, but I made up my mind to find out, so I gave my whole enter- tainment to that one old individual. I devoted myself entirely to him. It annoyed him, and soon he took a pencil from his pocket and tried to write something to divert his mind. When I recited "Over the Hill to the Poor- house ; " tears began to roll down the old man's face. I had got him. When the per- formance was over, he came up to me and put Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 243 two ten-dollar bills into my hand and said, " My boy, you have taught me a lesson that I never shall forget." This old man is now one of my best friends, and I go to see him fre- quently, and his daughters are like sisters to me. Occasionally I go to places where it is the custom for some private family to take charge of the entertainer, there being no good hotel near by. Generally I am capitally entertained. 1 usually know, as soon as I enter the house, the character of the entire family. There are two sure indications : one is the manner of the servants, and the other is the manner of the children. It does not take long to get ac- quainted with a child, and as soon as you have done it you know the parents ; in fact, you know the ancestors back for two or three generations. It is a good deal the same way with the servants. When a lady tells me that she has simply a dreadful time with her ser- vants, I have made up my mind that some one who is within speaking distance of me does not know how to manage her house, and the chances are about one hundred to one that I am entirely correct about it. Occasionally I have stepped out of my regular line and given a voluntary entertain- 244 The People I've Smiled With. ment of a sort which never fails to astonish people, although I never pretended that there was any mystery about it. It is in the line of mind-reading, about which the public have listened to a great deal of nonsense. Mind-reading is nothing but muscle-reading. A person who will concentrate his attention upon one subject, and who is at all sensitive, can generally succeed in finding what other people are thinking of. I have succeeded in performing just such feats as have made Mr. Bishop and Mr. Cumberland famous ; our methods may differ, but there is a great deal of trick about it. If I take you by the hand and lead you about the room and concentrate my attention upon your hand, you will lead me unconsciously just where you don't want to go, and the harder you try to keep me away from the article the easier it is for me to find it, for the muscular movements of your hand give me the cue. The same thing can be done with an article passed from hand to hand be- tween five or six people, the last one retain- ing it. Here is a specimen case which occurred at the Hoffman House in New York. A diamond brooch belonging to Mrs. Frank Leslie, who was one of the party, was to be taken by a Recollections of a Merry Little Life. '^45 gentlemen who would drive off with it behind a team of horses and hide it within a mile of the hotel. A committee was appointed to supervise the performance. The men who were to hide the article were selected by the operator himself, and he was careful to select nervous, sympathetic people. The carriage drove through Broadway to Twenty-first Street, over to Fourth Avenue, and then to Gramercy Park, where it stopped. The party went into the Gramercy Building, entered a room, hid the article there, and returned, the committee being with him. The operator was then blindfolded, and to make assurance double sure a black cap was placed over his eyes. The operator took the hand of the man who hid the article and traced different routes on a map before him until he struck the right one. After he had made up his mind where the article was hidden, he got into a carriage, accompanied by the committee, drove to the house, entered it, took the hand of one of the committee, and easily found the jirticle. I have succeeded in doing similar tricks many times, all through muscle-read- ing — not mind-reading. CHAPTER XXIV. An Ocean Trip. — A Glorious Bracer. — Some People Whom You Don't Meet. — Creditors. — People You ARE Sure to See. — The Doctor. — Fred Douglass. — Honeymoon Couples. — Gossip. — The Resurrection of " Plug" Hats, — Custom-house Officials. — The Trav- elling Di DE. — When Blaine Smiled, When I want a real jolly time and don't know how else to get it, I generally take a run across the ocean, one way or the other. A great many people dislike the idea of going to sea, but during May, June, July, and August the trip is generally pleasant. Persons who fear the torments of sea-sickness can generally have their minds relieved by their family phy- sicians, and if not sick I can't imagine any place where they'll get more rest and recrea- tion than on a first-class ocean steamer. All they need is to remain on deck as much as possible, look about them, make no special effort to obtain new acquaintances, and make a little effort to avoid having new acquaint- ances pushed upon them ; soon they will feel all right. 246 Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 247 The sweetest rest in the world is to be found on the ocean. While there you can't receive any letters or telegraphic dispatches or news- papers, and if you are anxious about any of them you may feel entirely sure that you will get them all as soon as you reach port. Simply to eat and drink and sleep and breathe pure air — and, on occasion, even a little fog — will rejuvenate a tired-out person sooner than anything else I know of. I ought to know what I'm talking about, for I have tried it a number of times, and always found the experi- ment successful. Of course you meet all sorts of people on shipboard ; besides the ordinary run of tourists, there are men running away from their wives, and wives running away from their husbands, and people of both sexes trying to get away from the police; but it isn't necessary to asso- ciate with any of these. Besides, there are a great many people who are getting away from their creditors. I have a great deal of respect for a creditor, perhaps because I dont't owe anything to any- body now, but there have been times when, to preserve my reputation for truthfulness, I have had to keep out of the way of collectors. I didn't dare tell them the truth, and I didn't 248 The People I've Smiled With : want to lie to them, so there was nothing else to do but keep out of the way. Creditors are entirely respectable individuals. They have been shamefully abused in literature. They want only what is due them, and if the rest of us are like them in this respect we are a great deal better than any one has given us credit for. One day during a remote impecu- nious period I said to a persistent collector, " Do you suppose a man's creditors will ever get to Heaven?" "They ought to," he re- plied, curtly, " they have to suffer more than any one else on earth." This remark affected me so seriously that within forty-eight hours I went out and borrowed the amount and paid him. The late Dr. George M. Beard, a very clever fellow, once reasoned this subject out as follows : " I look at it from the basis of applied mathematics. Will there be room in heaven for all the creditors ? There are in this world about a billion and a quarter human beings. To each one of these, according to my expe- rience, there are about twenty collectors — minis- tering angels of finance — a crowd of wit- nesses by whom we are surrounded. Surely the bounds of heaven cannot contain so many." " Besides," continued the Doctor, "the man who is hard up financially is not a free moral Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 249 agent. Next to marriage, debt is the closest of all connections. It has been said by those who regard themselves wise that you must winter and summer with a man before you can know him ; but I recommend a shorter and surer road to acquaintanceship, — get into debt to a man, or allow him to fall in debt to you. No man can be said to know another until he has been either his debtor or creditor. In other human relations it is different. Marriages are some- times followed by separations and divorces, and more often by infidelity, but my creditors or their representatives never run away. They are always faithful to me. I was looking a few days ago at a picture of Washington Ir- ving and his friends. If the picture of any one of a hundred men I know and his creditors could be painted, no canvas that ever was put on a frame would contain all the figures. It would be a tell-tale picture, though — some of the creditors or collectors sitting in a corner, others standing in front, a few lying on lounges, and quite a number lying in wait outside the front door. " And yet," the Doctor went on, " there are some very good points about creditors. Man is a believing animal. Tell him some- thing, and the odds are about ten to one that 25© The People I've Smiled With : he will accept your statement. Why does a man promise to pay ? Because he wants to pay and his creditors want him to. To a cred- itor, promises are what drinks are to inebriates; the more they have the more they want. Promises to creditors, like relays in the tele- graph, take up messages and convey them to a distance. If they would only convey the debtor also, a great deal of trouble would be spared this world, and a great deal of lying would be prevented." No one can cross the ocean on one of the popular steamers without making new ac- quaintances whom he never afterward loses, and whom, after he gets them, it seems he never could have lived without. Travel, like poverty, makes strange companions. On ship- board I have met many men whom I never would have noticed on shore, and I'm sure they never would have noticed me, yet we have been good friends ever since. To men- tion names would be to introduce a number of people in whom perhaps the reader could not be expected to take any interest, but I want to say a word or two about one historic char- acter whom I once met on a voyage. He was Fred Douglass — an American citizen of Afri- can extraction, who was born and reared a Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 251 slave, but has made himself one of the no- blest of freemen. When he first appeared upon deck, a number of his fellow-passengers de- cided to cut him. They didn't want to asso- ciate with a colored man. The old man — for he is old now — said nothing about it. I sup- pose he was used to that sort of thing. After we were two days out I was so indignant at the discourtesy shown toward a man whom I knew to be intelligent and honorable, that I approached him, introduced myself, and began chatting with him. After we had talked a little while we grew well enough acquainted to call each other by first names. There were a few moments of silence while Douglass looked ofl in a dreamy way over the expanse of water. Finally he said : " Marshall, do you see the difference in the altitude of those waves ? Doesn't it remind you of the dif- ference in men ? Some are very high and some very low, but taking them altogether they go to make up the whole." Other people were standing within listening distance as we talked. It was not long before a number of men made themselves acquainted with Mr. Douglass, and before the voyage was over he had won the heart of all persons aboard ship. Not quite all, either, for on one occasion, when 252 The People I've Smiled With: he was asked to take charge of an entertain- ment in the cabin, which he did with admir- able tact, talent, and courtesy, there was one Southerner present who announced that he would have nothing whatever to do with it if it was to be managed by a colored man. You will see any amount of fun on a steamer crossing the ocean if you keep your eyes open. For instance, a fellow comes up to me, recog- nizes me, and says : " Hallo, Wilder, you going to Europe ? So am I. We will have lots of fun going over ; we'll have seven days on ship- board. I have some friends I want to bid good-by to on the dock, and I'll see you again." The chances are I won't see him till seven days afterward, and then he will come up from his stateroom looking as if he had spent the entire time in taking emetics, starv- ing himself, and being rubbed down to get rid of superfluous flesh. On shipboard there are two things about which you are sure to hear a great deal; one is sea-sickness and the other is gossip. If you are rightly constructed you will let the gossip go in one ear and out of the other, and I don't know of any better way to treat stories about sea-sickness. I don't know which is the bigger man aboard Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 253 ship, the Captain or the Doctor. The Captain is almost sure to be a man who, if not other- wise engaged, would make a good President of the United States or King of England, but he is likely to be pretty busy all the way over. The Doctor has some leisure on his hands, and as a rule he is charged with the formal enter- tainments that may be given. He is a great fellow to go around and cheer people up. Cheer counts for more than medicine when people are feeling squeamish. He is as hos- pitable and hearty as if he owned the whole ship. He isn't like the old lady I heard of who asked some people to come and see her, to come early, bring their things for lunch, and she would see that they got home before tea- time. Neither does he keep people's minds on sea-sickness, or whatever subject is worry- ing them most. If there are some on board who are suffering from incurable diseases, he takes pains not to talk about it, although his professional advice is always at their service. Some people ashore aren't that way. I know a good-hearted old lady who had a friend with heart disease, and upon whom she precipitated herself one afternoon with the following speech : " Mary, I thought I'd just run down and cheer you up a little this 254 The People I've Smiled With : afternoon. I just came up the road and I saw your husband shot out there, but don't you mind it ; you can find a better one after a while. Don't look so white about it. I once knew a woman who looked as white as you, and she didn't live more than five minutes. Well, if he happens to be dead when he's brought in, don't hesitate to send for me ; I'm dreadful good at funerals." Of course the Doctor has to listen to a great deal of nonsense. I heard one lady say to him, " Oh, Doctor, I had a most terrible loss last night." " Indeed," said he, sympathetically, " what did you lose ? " " Why, I lost my tooth- brush." Another said : " Doctor, isn't that moon beautiful ? Do you suppose it is the same moon they have in Jersey City ? " On board ship you are almost certain to meet at least one bridal couple who are crossing the ocean on their honeymoon trip. I haven't been married yet, but when I am I shant take an ocean trip for the purpose of getting fairly ac- quainted with my wife. I don't know of a worse place in which to spend a honeymoon. A cheap and crowded New York boarding- house would be heaven compared to it. There is an expression on the bride's face, a perma- nent expression, which seems to say to the Recollections of a Merty Little Life. 255 groom, " Oh, I wish I had never seen you ! " and the bridegroom looks as if he would say, '■'■ I wish to heaven you would take your things out of my trunk and go home to your mother and leave me to myself." A great deal of courage is displayed in efforts to avoid sea-sickness, but sometimes they come to grief. You meet a fellow-passenger and say, "How are you to-day, Brown? " "Oh, I'm first rate." " Been ill yet ? " " No, not at all." " Did you notice last night how the ship rose and fell on the waves?" Then Brown puts his hand about where the waist-band of his trousers meets, and gasps, " Oh, don't say that, please ; don't say that ; it breaks me all up." Not being accustomed to ocean travel, some sensible people on ship-board say very odd things, and some others are foolish enough to take the remarks in earnest. One day an old lady at dinner-table, while the ship was pitch- ing frightfully, spilled some coffee on my coat, and exclaimed at once: " I beg your pardon, I'm sorry I spilled anything on your coat ; I'm willing to pay if I spoiled it ; how much ought I to pay ? " I thought the best thing to do was to relieve her mind on the subject at once, so I replied : " Well, I don't really know ; how 256 The People I've Smiled With: much do you usually pay in such cases ? " Then she laughed, and that settled the matter. The day you reach Liverpool it is odd to see all the men come up on deck with new hats on ; you don't know them. At sea a fellow learns to wear anything on his head that will stick there tightest ; consequently he seldom wears a " stovepipe " hat ; so when he appears with such a decoration just as he is going into port, the chances are that if he is your bosom friend you don't know him at sight. I must record the fact — and leave my read- ers to make their own inferences — that Custom House officers on the English side are far more courteous and considerate than those of this country, and their system is much better than ours, where you have to open your trunks on a dock, perhaps where a lot of guano is stored or a lot of caustic potash is sprinkled around, and stand in a draft and expose yourself to all sorts of weather. The English customs officers are fussy only over two things. One is printed matter — for instance a book or a printed song, and the other is liquor. One of them said to a fellow-passenger of mine : " Have you any- thing to drink in your trunk ? " My friend said : " No, I've nothing in that trunk except wearing apparel." But when the trunk was Recollectiotts of a Merry Little Life. 257 opened the officer looked up reproachfully and said : " You said you hadn't anything in the trunk except your clothing. How do you ac- count for this dozen bottles of brandy ? " " Oh," said my friend, " that's all right ; those are night-caps." The officer saw the point. There are always some dudes on a steamer, no matter which way it is going, and I'm glad of it, because they always make a great deal of fun for other people. I heard of one who on a voyage over was reproved by his wife for not restraining the children more carefully from being nuisances to the passengers. One day the children were making themselves unusually offensive, and she exclaimed : " Charley, do speak to the children." Her husband straight- ened himself up, put on a helpless sort of man- ner, and then said, " How do you do, chil- dren ? " I noticed in England a great number of American dudes. Goingthrough a parlor there one day I met one fellow, who said to me, " Ah, when did you come from America ? " I replied, " Oh, about a month ago. Are you from America ? " " Yes," he said, " I am from Phila- delphia." " How do you like London ? " I asked. " Oh," he said, " I like it very much. I would prefer to live here." " How do you 258 The People I've Sjniled With. like London society ? " " Very well ; but — one meets so many Americans here, don't you know." On one of my recent passages from England to America I succeeded in amusing Mr. Blaine. We were coming up New York Bay, the most beautiful bay on the face of the earth, and the sunshine was simply sparkling about us. It was real American sunshine, and it struck us after three solid months of English rain and Scotch mist. Mr. Blaine turned to me and said : "Ah, Marshall, did you ever see such sunshine in a free-trade country? " " No," said I, " it's an- other one of the blessings of protection." Then Blaine smiled. CHAPTER XXV. Myself Once More. — One Use of Affliction. — Picking UP Material. — Dining Customs. — Not the Right Story. — Two Stammerers. — I Laugh at My Jokes. — Sometimes the Audience Laugh at the Wrong Place. — Critical Audiences. — Hard_Work. — Good-by. Once more let me talk about myself. This is positively my last appearance in this book.= I know I have appeared several times before, but I've done it only for the purpose of an- swering questions which are put to me orally so often that I feel I ought to answer them in bulk to a number of persons who yet may be desirous of propounding them. As I said at the beginning, nature originally was unkind to me in some ways, but I can't say that I regret it. My dear old friend Henry Ward Beecher used to preach frequently on the blessings of affliction, and I can say from personal experience that a man has to be slightly afflicted to know how much kindness and good-heartedness there is in this world. I have hundreds and thousands, I think, of friends, whom I might never have known ex- 259 26o The People I've Smiled With: cept for some peculiarities which old Dame Nature inflicted upon me. Probably she knew her business best, but at any rate, like the lit- tle fellow with no feet whom I have already alluded to, " I'm not kicking." I have been asked again and again how I always contrive to be ready to speak at short notice, and whether I don't prepare myself in advance for any sort of emergency. I can say truthfully that I make no preparation what- ever. When I go upon the stage or platform I seldom know what I am going to say or do. I don't look to myself for inspiration, but to my audience, and no two audiences are exactly alike. I am also asked frequently where I get the material for my sketches and recitations. Well, so far as chestnuts are concerned, I have already explained sufificiently, but I am con- stantly giving off new sketches, and using new material. Where do I get it ? Why, anywhere and everywhere. In the long run everything I talk about is human nature, — only that and nothing more, — and that can be seen and found anywhere, and, as my readers often have heard, probably, truth is stranger than fiction. If I were going to recite to-night, and were assured that nothing I had ever done before would be Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 261 appreciated by the audience I was to meet, I shouldn't be at all troubled in mind. I would simply walk upon a horse-car, or into a club, or stand at a street-corner, or in a theater lobby, and in a little while would have enough good material for half-a-dozen recitations. Human nature is what people like to hear about. You can't please any one better than by telling him well, — please note the qualifica- tion, — by telling him well about something which he already understands. The most popular books and plays and poems in exis- tence are not those which contain something new, but those which confine themselves to subjects upon which every one thinks he knows everything. Some of my most successful work has been in the line of after-dinner speeches, and I have been asked how I could go through ten or twelve courses of food, and six or eight different kinds of wine, and then have any head on my shoulders. Well, the answer is very easy — I don't. I never drink wine or any other liquor. Stronger men than I, who think they need such things, are respectfully referred to my stature and fighting weight in illustration of the fact that if a man doesn't want to drink he doesn't need to. As to the dining, I never 262 The People I've Smiled With : have any trouble about eating enough to keep myself alive, and if I am going to any place where a big dinner is to be served, I take the precaution of eating first a quiet dinner some- where else; then I am certain my digestion will not be upset. I don't wish to give away any other man's business secrets, but I venture to say that the best after-dinner speakers in the United States are the most moderate diners. If you will cast your eye at the table in front of some man at a big dinner who gets up and makes a capital speech, you will probably see one of two things — either that all his glasses are turned upside down or that they are en- tirely full. In other words, he has been drink- ing little or nothing. One of the most famous givers of good dinners in the United States never eats anything himself but a mutton chop and a couple of slices of dry toast. He drinks nothing but tea, and yet his health, com- plexion, and spirits are all that any one could desire. I don't wish to imply that I am an ascetic. I take my three meals a day, and I insist that they shall be as good as my pocket can stand, but I don't propose to upset my di- gestion for the sake of the best company in the world. When it falls to my lot to make a speech or Recollections of a Merry Little Life. 263 tell a story, I assume that the gathering is one of good fellows, and that it isn't advisable to hit anybody or hurt any one's feelings. It is often possible to tell a good story with a very bad result. Every one has his peculiarity, and it isn't easy to avoid treading upon toes. I was at a church-sociable one night in which an old folks' tableau was given. Suddenly the director pointed to a young man in one of the front seats, and asked him if he would come up on the platform. He responded at once. She placed him in an attitude of extreme joy, asked him to smile ecstatically, and then said to the audience, " This is a tableau of a young man's glee on receiving the news that his scolding wife has just died." The young man suddenly straightened as stiffly as a fence-post. His own wife, who had been a terrible scold, had been buried only the week before. Such mistakes can't be helped once in a while. A man who is a stammerer was riding on an elevated railway train once, and the brakeman put his head in the door as the train was slowing up, and said : " The next station is F-f-f-fourteenth Street." The man stepped up to him and said : " L-I-let me know when you get to F-f-f-forty-second Street." Then the passenger dropped into a peaceful doze. 264 The People I've Smiled With: In the course of half an hour the brakeman shouted, " H-h-h-harlem ; all out ! " The pas- senger went up to him and said angrily: " Didn't I t-t-tell you to 1-1-let me know when you got to F-f-f-forty-second Street ? " " Yes," said the brakeman, " b-b-but I saw you were making f-f-fun of me, and I wouldn't do it." I always laugh at my own jokes. I believe I have said this before, but I want to say it again for this sake of explaining. I don't'do it for the sake of business, but because I can't help it. A number of years ago I determined to be good-natured under all circumstances, and enjoy everything humourous I heard, and I don't find myself able to break the rule now, even when the funny thing happens to be said by myself. It does me a lot of good in the way of business, but I never put it in on that account. I simply can't help it. If ever you come to hear me talk and see me begin to laugh, and make up your mind that you wont follow my example, why, go right ahead ; I shant feel hurt, I shant feel sorry the least bit — except for you. Don't imagine, though, that I always laugh, for once in a while I don't. There are times when other people laugh before I, and some, times it is embarrassing. One night I was giv- Recollections of a Merry Little Life, 265 ing an entertainment at Dr. Talmage's church, and I had just reached the line, " And the old man sighed." when something in the big organ gave way either by accident or design, and through one of the pipes came a sigh such as might have been given by a giant who had been lunching on green apples. After the audience got through laughing I went on, but the poem wasn't pathetic any longer, although the author meant it to be. Some actors, singers, and musicians find themselves terribly broken up and nervous when the management, with more solicitude than sense, blunders into informing them that the audience is very critical; that sort of speech never troubles me a bit. I always think of a man who was said not to have any spirits, but who, when he got into a discussion with his wife, would frequently reach a state of mind in which it was desirable to call for the police. Some one once called his attention to the fact that, as a rule, he was a most mild-mannered person, and consequently it was surprising to see him give way to such an ebullition of temper. "Well," he replied, " that's so; but my wife nagged me up to it." That is just the way a critical audience affects me, and if there 266 The People I've Smiled With: is any stimulus of that sort going about I can stand all of it that any one can give me. To the numerous people that seem to think I have nothing to do in this world but enjoy myself, I want to say that I work for my living quite as hard as any one else. Just look for a moment, by way of comparison, at the dif- ference between the single individual expected to entertain people, and a company of dramatic artists on the stage. The average duration of the recitation and acting of a play is about two hours, and there seldom are less than ten peo- ple in the cast. Even if the play is what is called a star piece, in which most of the work is assigned to the leading character, not one of the company is busy more than one hour dur- ing the course of the evening. Sometimes I have to talk two hours on a stretch, with in- termissions of only a moment or two, and even then I am on the stage or platform so that I can't change my clothes, or take a bite of something, or try two or three whiffs of a cigar, as almost any actor can in his dressing-room. Many a time I attend threeor four different re- ceptions in the course of an evening, — always on business. I am expected at each to do my very best, which I always try to do. It isn't always easy to be funny to order. All sorts of unex- Recollections of a Merry Little Life. ^^7 pected things occur to upset a man's plans, aud I am no exception to the general run of human nature. I have to attend strictly to business on such occasions, and sometimes it requires all the strength and self-control there is in me — not that I have anything to worry me especially regarding myself, but that I feel responsible for what the several audiences expect of me. Still, I have nothing to complain of. I have plenty of friends, a solacing bank account, and I succeed in having a good deal of time to my- self. Whenever I have an unemployed even- ing I make it my business to go out and enjoy myself. No one enjoys better than I hearing other people sing, or laugh, or talk to entertain the public. I know how the old preacher felt who, going with his son, also a minister, to hear a sermon by some one else, heaved a deep sigh of content, and said : " Son, it's a great comfort to hear somebody else hold forth." Well, that comfort is mine very frequently. I strike some golden days once in a while, or golden nights. When a reception is given by Mrs. Croly, or Mrs. Frank Leslie, or some other of my kind friends, and I don't chance to be engaged that night, I am as happy as a boy who has found a new bag of marbles. 268 The People I've Smiled With. When I go to a theatre or opera, I listen to the other people and enjoy myself a great deal more than any one else in the audience, for I know by experience just how much trouble and pains they are taking to entertain other people. That's the sort of a fellow I am. Good-by ! FINIS. "" '^^ .^..