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Forty Minutes Late, by F. Hopkinson Smith
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Forty Minutes Late, by F. Hopkinson Smith
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Forty Minutes Late
1909
Author: F. Hopkinson Smith
Release Date: December 3, 2007 [EBook #23697]
Last Updated: March 8, 2018
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORTY MINUTES LATE ***
Produced by David Widger
</pre>
<div style="height: 8em;">
<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
</div>
<h1>
FORTY MINUTES LATE
</h1>
<h2>
By F. Hopkinson Smith <br /> 1909
</h2>
<p>
<br /><br /><br />
</p>
<p>
It began to snow half an hour after the train started—a
fine-grained, slanting, determined snow that forced its way between the
bellows of the vestibules, and deposited itself in mounds of powdered salt
all over the platforms and steps. Even the porter had caught some puffs on
his depot coat with the red cape, and so had the conductor, from the way
he thrashed his cap on the back of the seat in front of mine. “Yes,
gettin' worse,” he said in answer to an inquiring lift of my eyebrows.
“Everything will be balled up if this keeps on.”
</p>
<p>
“Shall we make the connection at Bondville?” I was to lecture fifty miles
from Bondville Junction, and had but half an hour lee-way.
</p>
<p>
If the man with the punch heard, he made no answer. The least said the
soonest mended in crises like this. If we arrived on time every passenger
would grab his bag and bolt out without thanking him or the road, or the
engineer who took the full blast of the storm on his chest and cheeks. If
we missed the connection, any former hopeful word would only add another
hot coal to everybody's anger.
</p>
<p>
I fell back on the porter.
</p>
<p>
“Yes' sir, she'll be layin' jes' 'cross de platform. She knows we're
comin'. Sometimes she waits ten minutes—sometimes she don't; more
times I seen her pullin' out while we was pullin' in.”
</p>
<p>
Not very reassuring this. Only one statement was of value—the
position of the connecting train when we rolled into Bondville.
</p>
<p>
I formulated a plan: The porter would take one bag, I the other—we
would both stand on the lower step of the Pullman, then make a dash. If
she was pulling out as we pulled in, a goatlike spring on my part might
succeed; the bags being hurled after me to speed the animal's motion.
</p>
<p>
One hour later we took up our position.
</p>
<p>
“Dat's good!—Dar she is jes' movin' out: thank ye, sar. I got de bag—dis
way!”
</p>
<p>
There came a jolt, a Saturday-afternoon slide across the ice-covered
platform, an outstretched greasy hand held down from the step of the
moving train, followed by the chug of a bag that missed my knees by a
hand's breadth—and I was hauled on board.
</p>
<p>
The contrast between a warm, velvet-lined Pullman and a cane-seated car
with both doors opened every ten minutes was anything but agreeable; but
no discomfort should count when a lecturer is trying to make his
connection. That is what he is paid for and that he must do at all hazards
and at any cost, even to chartering a special train, the price devouring
his fee.
</p>
<p>
Once in my seat an account of stock was taken—two bags, an umbrella,
overcoat, two gum shoes (one off, one on), manuscript of lecture in bag,
eye-glasses in outside pocket of waistcoat. This over, I spread myself
upon the cane seat and took in the situation. It was four o'clock (the
lecture was at eight); Sheffield was two hours away; this would give time
to change my dress and get something to eat. The committee, moreover, were
to meet me at the depot with a carriage and drive me to where I was “to
spend the night and dine”—so the chairman's letter read. The
suppressed smile on the second conductor's face when he punched my ticket
and read the name of “Sheffield” sent my hand into my pocket in search of
this same letter. Yes—there was no mistake about it,—“Our
carriage,” it read, “will meet you,” etc., etc.
</p>
<p>
The confirmation brought with it a certain thrill; not a carriage picked
up out of the street, or a lumbering omnibus—a mere go-between from
station to hotels—but “our carriage!” Nothing like these lecture
associations, I thought,—nothing like these committees, for making
strangers comfortable. That was why it was often a real pleasure to appear
before them. This one would, no doubt, receive me in a big yellow and
white Colonial club-house built by the women of the town (I know of a
dozen just such structures), with dressing and lunch rooms, spacious
lecture hall, and janitor in gray edged with black.
</p>
<p>
This thought called up my own responsibility in the matter; I was glad I
had caught the train; it was a bad night to bring people out and then
disappoint them, even if most of them did come in their own carriages.
Then again, I had kept my word; none of my fault, of course, if I hadn't—but
I had!—that was a source of satisfaction. Now that I thought of it,
I had, in all my twenty years of lecturing, failed only twice to reach the
platform. In one instance a bridge was washed away, and in the other my
special train (the price I paid for that train still keeps me hot against
the Trusts) ran into a snowdrift and stayed there until after midnight,
instead of delivering me on time, as agreed. I had arrived late, of
course, many times, gone without my supper often, and more than once had
appeared without the proper habiliments—and I am particular about my
dress coat and white waistcoat—but only twice had the gas been
turned off and the people turned out. Another time I had—
</p>
<p>
“Sheffield! Shef-fie-l-d! All out for Shef-f-i-e-l-d!” yelled the
conductor.
</p>
<p>
The two bags once more, the conductor helping me on with my overcoat, down
the snow-blocked steps and out into the night.
</p>
<p>
“Step lively!—more'n an hour late now.”
</p>
<p>
I looked about me. I was the only passenger. Not a light of any kind—not
a building of any kind, sort, or description, except a box-car of a
station set up on end, pitch dark inside and out, and shut tight. No
carriage. No omnibus; nothing on runners; nothing on wheels. Only a dreary
waste of white, roofed by a vast expanse of black.
</p>
<p>
“Is this Sheffield?” I gasped.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,—all there is here; the balance is two miles over the hills.”
</p>
<p>
“The town?”
</p>
<p>
“Town?—no, the settlement;—ain't more's two dozen houses in
it.”
</p>
<p>
“They were to send a carriage and—”
</p>
<p>
“Yes—that's an old yarn—better foot it for short.” Here he
swung his lantern to the engineer craning his head from the cab of the
locomotive, and sprang aboard. Then this fragment came whirling through
the steam and smoke:—“There's a farmhouse somewhere's over the hill,—follow
the fence and turn to—” the rest was lost in the roar of the
on-speeding train.
</p>
<p>
I am no longer young. Furthermore, I hate to carry things—bags
especially. One bag might be possible—a very small one; two bags,
both big, are an insult.
</p>
<p>
I deposited the two outside the box-car, tried the doors, inserted my
fingers under the sash of one window, looked at the chimney with a
half-formed Santa Claus idea of scaling the roof and sliding down to some
possible fireplace below; examined the wind-swept snow for carriage
tracks, peered into the gloom, and, as a last resort, leaned up against
the sheltered side of the box to think.
</p>
<p>
There was no question that if a vehicle of any kind had been sent to meet
me it had long since departed; the trackless roadway showed that. It was
equally evident that if one was coming, I had better meet it on the way
than stay where I was and freeze to death. The fence was still visible—the
near end—and there was a farmhouse somewhere—so the conductor
had said, and he seemed to be an honest, truthful man. Whether to right or
left of the invisible road, the noise of the train and the howl of the
wind had prevented my knowing—but <i>somewhere's</i>—That was
a consolation.
</p>
<p>
The bags were the most serious obstacles. If I carried one in each hand
the umbrella would have to be cached, for some future relief expedition to
find in the spring.
</p>
<p>
There <i>was</i> a way, of course, to carry bags—any number of bags.
All that was needed was a leather strap with a buckle at each end; I had
helped to hang half a dozen bags across the shoulders of as many porters
meeting trains all over Europe. Of course, I didn't wear leather straps.
Suspenders were my stronghold. They might!—No, it was too cold to
get at them in that wind. And if I did they were of the springy, wabbly
kind that would seesaw the load from my hips to my calves.
</p>
<p>
The only thing was to press on. Some one had blundered, of course.
</p>
<p>
“Half a league, half a league—into the jaws,” etc.
</p>
<p>
“Theirs not to reason why—” But my duty was plain; the audience were
already assembling; the early ones in their seats by this time.
</p>
<p>
Then an inspiration surged through me. Why not slip the umbrella through
the handle of one bag, as Pat carries his shillalah and bundle of duds,
and grab the other in my free hand! Our carriage couldn't be far off. The
exercise would keep my blood active and my feet from freezing, and as to
the road, was there not the fence, its top rail making rabbit jumps above
the drifts?
</p>
<p>
So I trudged on, stumbling into holes, flopping into treacherous ruts,
halting in the steeper places to catch my breath, till I reached the top
of the hill. There I halted—stopped short, in fact: the fence had
given out! In its place was a treacherous line of bushes that faded into a
delusive clump of trees. Beyond, and on both sides, stretched a great
white silence—still as death.
</p>
<p>
Another council of war. I could retrace my steps, smash in the windows of
the station, and camp for the night, taking my chances of stopping some
east-bound train as it whizzed past, with a match and my necktie—or
I could stumble on, perhaps in a circle, and be found in the morning by
the early milk.
</p>
<p>
On! On once more—maybe the clump of trees hid something—maybe—
</p>
<p>
Here a light flashed—a mere speck of a light—not to the right,
where lay the clump of trees—but to my left; then a faint wave of
warm color rose from a chimney and curled over a low roof buried in snow.
Again the light flashed—this time through a window with four panes
of glass—each one a beacon to a storm-tossed mariner!
</p>
<p>
On once more—into a low hollow—up a steep slope—slipping,
falling, shoving the hand-gripped bag ahead of me to help my footing,
until I reached a snow-choked porch and a closed door.
</p>
<p>
Here I knocked.
</p>
<p>
For some seconds there was no sound; then came a heavy tread, and a man in
overalls threw wide the door.
</p>
<p>
“Well, what do you want at this time of night?” (Time of night, and it but
seven-thirty!)
</p>
<p>
“I'm the lecturer,” I panted.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, come! Ain't they sent for ye? Here, I'll take 'em. Walk in and
welcome. You look beat out. Well—well—wife and I was
won-derin' why nothin' driv past for the six-ten. We knowed you was
comin'. Then agin, the station master's sick, and I 'spose ye couldn't
warm up none. And they ain't sent for ye? And they let ye tramp all—Well—well!”
</p>
<p>
I did not answer. I hadn't breath enough left for sustained conversation;
moreover, there was a red-hot stove ahead of me, and a rocking-chair,—comforts
I had never expected to see again—and there was a pine table—oh,
a lovely pine table, with a most exquisite white oil-cloth cover, holding
the most beautiful kerosene lamp with a piece of glorious red flannel
floating in its amber fluid; and in the corner—a wife—a
sweet-faced, angelic-looking young wife, with a baby in her arms too
beautiful for words—must have been!
</p>
<p>
I dropped into the chair, spread my fingers to the stove and looked around—warmth—rest-peace—comfort—companionship—all
in a minute!
</p>
<p>
“No, they didn't send anything,” I wheezed when my breath came. “The
conductor told me I should find the farmhouse over the hill—and—”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, that's so; it's back a piece, you must have missed it.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes—I must have missed it,” I continued in a dazed way.
</p>
<p>
“The folks at the farmhouse is goin' to hear ye speak, so they told me.
Must be startin' now.”
</p>
<p>
“Would you please let them know I am here, and—”
</p>
<p>
“Sure! Wait till I get on my boots! Hello!—that's him now.”
</p>
<p>
Again the door swung wide. This time it let in a fur overcoat, coon-skin
cap, two gray yarn mittens, a pair of raw-beefsteak cheeks and a voice
like a fog-horn.
</p>
<p>
“Didn't send for ye? Wall, I'll be gol-durned! And yer had to fut it?
Well, don' that beat all. And yer ain't the fust one they've left down
here to get up the best way they could. Last winter—Jan'ry, warn't
it, Bill?” Bill nodded—“there come a woman from New York and they
dumped her out jes' same as you. I happened to come along in time, as luck
would have it—I was haulin' a load of timber on my bob-sled—and
there warn't nothin' else, so I took her up to the village. She got in
late, of course, but they was a-waitin' for her. I really wasn't goin' to
hear you speak to-night—we git so much of that sort of thing since
the old man who left the money to pay you fellers for talkin' died—been
goin' on ten years now—but I'll take yer 'long with me, and glad to.
But yer oughter have somethin' warmer'n what yer got on. Wind's kinder
nippy down here, but it ain't nothin' to the way it bites up on the
ridge.”
</p>
<p>
This same thought had passed through my own mind. The unusual exertion had
started every pore in my body; the red-hot stove had put on the finishing
touches and I was in a Russian bath. To face that wind meant all sorts of
calamities.
</p>
<p>
The Madonna-like wife with the cherub in her arms rose to her feet.
</p>
<p>
“Would you mind wearing my fur tippet?” she said in her soft voice;
“'tain't much, but it 'ud keep out the cold from yer neck and maybe this
shawl'd help some, if I tied it round your shoulders. Father got his death
ridin' to the village when he was overhet.”
</p>
<p>
She put them on with her own hands, bless her kind heart! her husband
holding the baby; then she followed me out into the cold and helped draw
the horse-blanket over my knees; the man in the coon-skin cap lugging the
bags and the umbrella.
</p>
<p>
I looked at my watch. After eight o'clock, and two miles to drive!
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I'll git yer there,” came a voice from inside the fur overcoat.
“Darter wanted to go, but I said 'twarn't no night to go nowhars. Got to
see a man who owes me some money, or I'd stay home myself. Git up, Joe.”
</p>
<p>
It was marvellous, the intelligence of this man. More than marvellous when
my again blinded eyes—the red flannel in the lamp helped—began
to take in the landscape. Fences were evidently of no use to him; clumps
of trees didn't count. If he had a compass anywhere about his clothes, he
never once consulted it. Drove right on—across trackless Siberian
steppes; by the side of endless glaciers, and through primeval forests,
his voice keeping up its volume of sound, as he laid bare for me the
scandals of the village—particularly the fight going on between the
two churches—one hard and one soft—this lecture course being
one of the bones of contention.
</p>
<p>
I saved my voice and kept quiet. If a runner did not give out or “Joe”
break a leg, we would reach the hall in time; half an hour late, perhaps—but
in time; the man beside me had said so—and the man beside me knew.
</p>
<p>
With a turn of the fence—a new one had thrust its hands out of a
drift—a big building—big in the white waste—loomed up.
My companion flapped the reins the whole length of Joe's back.
</p>
<p>
“Git up! No, by gosh!—they ain't tired yet;—they're still
a-waitin'. See them lights—that's the hall.”
</p>
<p>
I gave a sigh of relief. The ambitious young man with one ear open for
stellar voices, and the overburdened John Bunyan, and any number of other
short-winded pedestrians, could no longer monopolize the upward and onward
literature of our own or former times. I too had arrived.
</p>
<p>
Another jerk to the right—a trot up an incline, and we stopped at a
steep flight of steps—a regular Jacob's-ladder flight—leading
to a corridor dimly lighted by the flare of a single gas jet. Up this I
stumbled, lugging the bags once more, my whole mind bent on reaching the
platform at the earliest possible moment—a curious mental attitude,
I am aware, for a man who had eaten nothing since noon, was still wet and
shivering inside, and half frozen outside—nose, cheeks, and fingers—-from
a wind that cut like a circular saw.
</p>
<p>
As I landed the last bag on the top step—the fog-horn couldn't leave
his horse—I became conscious of the movements of a short, rotund,
shad-shaped gentleman in immaculate white waistcoat, stiff choker and wide
expanse of shirt front. He was approaching me from the door of the lecture
hall in which sat the audience; then a clammy hand was thrust out—and
a thin voice trickled this sentence:
</p>
<p>
“You're considerable late sir—our people have been in their—”
</p>
<p>
“I am <i>what!</i>” I cried, straightening up.
</p>
<p>
“I said you were forty minutes late, sir. We expect our lecturers to be on—”
</p>
<p>
That was the fulminate that exploded the bomb. Up to now I had held myself
in hand. I was carrying, I knew, 194 pounds of steam, and I also knew that
one shovel more of coal would send the entire boiler into space, but
through it all I had kept my hand on the safety-valve. It might have been
the white waistcoat or the way the curved white collar cupped his
billiard-ball of a chin, or it might have been the slight frown about his
eyebrows, or the patronizing smile that drifted over his freshly laundered
face; or it might have been the deprecating gesture with which he
consulted his watch: whatever it was, out went the boiler.
</p>
<p>
“Late! Are you the man that's running this lecture course?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, sir, I have the management of it.”
</p>
<p>
“You have, have you? Then permit me to tell you right here, my friend,
that you ought to sublet the contract to a five-year-old boy. You let me
get out in the cold—send no conveyance as you agreed—”
</p>
<p>
“We sent our wagon, sir, to the station. You could have gone in and warmed
yourself, and if it had not arrived you could have telephoned—the
station is always warm.”
</p>
<p>
“You have the impudence to tell me that I don't know whether a station is
closed or not, and that I can't see a wagon when it is hauled up alongside
a depot?”
</p>
<p>
The clammy hands went up in protest: “If you will listen, sir, I will—”
</p>
<p>
“No, sir, I will listen to nothing.” and I forged ahead into a small room
where five or six belated people were hanging up their coats and hats.
</p>
<p>
But the Immaculate still persisted:
</p>
<p>
“This is not where—Will you come into the dressing-room, sir? We
have a nice warm room for the lecturers on the other side of the—”
</p>
<p>
“No—sir; I won't go another step, except on to that platform, and
I'm not very anxious now to get there—not until I put something
inside of me—” (here I unstrapped my bag) “to save me from an attack
of pneumonia.” (I had my flask out now and the cup filled to the brim.)
“When I think of how hard I worked to get here and how little you—”
(and down it went at one gulp).
</p>
<p>
The expression of disgust that wrinkled the placid face of the Immaculate
as the half-empty flask went back to its place, was pathetic—but I
wouldn't have given him a drop to have saved his life.
</p>
<p>
I turned on him again.
</p>
<p>
“Do you think it would be possible to get a vehicle of any kind to take me
where I am to sleep?”
</p>
<p>
“I think so, sir.” His self-control was admirable.
</p>
<p>
“Well, will you please do it?”
</p>
<p>
“A sleigh has already been ordered, sir.” This came through tightly closed
lips.
</p>
<p>
“All right. Now down which aisle is the entrance to the platform?”
</p>
<p>
“This way, sir.” The highest glacier on Mont Blanc couldn't have been
colder or more impassive.
</p>
<p>
Just here a calming thought wedged itself into my brain-storm. These
patient, long-suffering people were not to blame; many of them had come
several miles through the storm to hear me speak and were entitled to the
best that was in me. To vent upon them my spent steam because—No,
that was impossible.
</p>
<p>
“Hold on, my friend,” I said, “stop where you are, let me pull myself
together. This isn't their fault—” We were passing behind the screen
hiding the little stage.
</p>
<p>
But he didn't hold on; he marched straight ahead; so did I, past the
pitcher of ice water and the two last winter's palms, where he motioned me
to a chair.
</p>
<p>
His introduction was not long, nor was it discursive. There was nothing
eulogistic of my various acquirements, occupations, talents; no remark
about the optimistic trend of my literature, the affection in which my
characters were held; nothing of this at all. Nor did I expect it. What
interested me more was the man himself.
</p>
<p>
The steam of my wrath had blurred his outline and make-up before; now I
got a closer, although a side, view of his person. He was a short man,
much thicker at the middle than he was at either end—a defect all
the more apparent by reason of a long-tailed, high-waisted, unbuttonable
black coat which, while it covered his back and sides, would have left his
front exposed, but for his snowy white waistcoat, which burst like a ball
of cotton from its pod.
</p>
<p>
His only gesture was the putting together of his ten fingers, opening and
touching them again to accentuate his sentences. What passed through my
mind as I sat and watched him, was not the audience, nor what I was going
to say to them, but the Christianlike self-control of this gentleman—a
control which seemed to carry with it a studied reproof. Under its
influence I unconsciously closed both furnace doors and opened my forced
draft. Even then I should have reached for the safety-valve, but for an
oily, martyr-like smile which flickered across his face, accompanied by a
deprecating movement of his elbows, both indicating his patience under
prolonged suffering, and his instant readiness to turn the other cheek if
further smiting on my part was in store for him. I strode to the edge of
the platform: “I know, good people,” I exploded, “that you are not
responsible for what has happened, but I want to tell you before I begin,
that I have been boiling mad for ten minutes and am still at white heat,
and that it is going to take me some time to get cool enough to be of the
slightest service to you. You notice that I appear before you without a
proper suit of clothes—a mark of respect which every lecturer should
pay his audience. You are also aware that I am nearly an hour late. What I
regret is, first, the cause of my frame of mind, second, that you should
have been kept waiting. Now, let me tell you exactly what I have gone
through, and I do it simply because this is not the first time that this
has happened to your lecturers, and it ought to be your last. It certainly
will be the last for me.” Then followed the whole incident, including the
Immaculate's protest about my being late, my explosion, etc., etc., even
to the incident of my flask.
</p>
<p>
There was a dead silence—so dead and lifeless that I could not tell
whether they were offended or not; but I made my bow as usual, and began
my discourse.
</p>
<p>
The lecture over, the Immaculate paid me my fee with punctilious courtesy,
waiving the customary receipt; followed me to the cloak-room, helped me on
with my coat, picked up one of the bags,—an auditor the other, and
the two followed me down Jacob's ladder into the night. Outside stood a
sleigh shaped like the shell of Dr. Holmes's <i>Nautilus</i>, its body
hardly large enough to hold a four-months-old baby. This was surrounded by
half the audience, anxious, I afterward learned, for a closer view of the
man who had “sassed” the Manager. Some of them expected it to continue.
</p>
<p>
I squeezed in beside the bags and was about to draw up the horse blanket,
when a voice rang out:
</p>
<p>
“Mis' Plimsole's goin' in that sleigh, too.” It was at Mrs. Plimsole's
that I was to spend the night.
</p>
<p>
Then a faint voice answered back:
</p>
<p>
“No, I can just as well walk.” She evidently knew the danger of sitting
next to an overcharged boiler.
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Plimsole!—a woman—walk—on a night like this—I
was out of the sleigh before she had ceased to speak.
</p>
<p>
“No, madam, you are going to do nothing of the kind; if anybody is to walk
it will be I; I'm getting used to it.”
</p>
<p>
She allowed me to tuck her in. It was too dark for me to see what she was
like—she was so swathed and tied up. Being still mad—fires
drawn but still dangerous, I concluded that my companion was sour, and
skinny, with a parrot nose and one tooth gone. That I was to pass the
night at her house did not improve the estimate; there would be mottoes on
the walls—“What is home without a mother,” and the like; tidies on
the chairs, and a red-hot stove smelling of drying socks. There would also
be a basin and pitcher the size of a cup and saucer, and a bed that sagged
in the middle and was covered with a cotton quilt.
</p>
<p>
The <i>Nautilus</i> stopped at a gate, beyond which was a smaller Jacob's
ladder leading to a white cottage. Was there nothing built on a level in
Sheffield? I asked myself. The bags which had been hung on the shafts came
first, then I, then the muffled head and cloak. Upward and onward again,
through a door, past a pretty girl who stood with her hand on the knob in
welcome, and into a hall. Here the girl helped unmummy her mother, and
then turned up the hall-lamp.
</p>
<p>
Oh, such a dear, sweet gray-haired old lady! The kind of an old lady you
would have wanted to stay—not a night with—but a year. An old
lady with plump fresh cheeks and soft brown eyes and a smile that warmed
you through and through. And such an all-embracing restful room with its
open wood fire, andirons and polished fender—and the plants and
books and easy-chairs! And the cheer of it all!
</p>
<p>
“Now you just sit there and get comfortable,” she said, patting my
shoulder—(the second time in one night that a woman's hand had been
that of an angel). “Maggie'll get you some supper. We had it all ready,
expecting you on the six-ten. Hungry, aren't you?”
</p>
<p>
Hungry! I could have gnawed a hole in a sofa to get at the straw stuffing.
</p>
<p>
She drew up a chair, waited till her daughter had left the room, and said
with a twinkle in her eyes:
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I was glad you gave it to 'em the way you did, and when you sailed
into that snivelling old Hard-shell deacon, I just put my hands down under
my petticoats and clapped them for joy. There isn't anybody running
anything up here. They don't have to pay for this lecture course. It was
given to them by a man who is dead. All they think they've got to do is to
dress themselves up. They're all officers; there's a recording secretary
and a corresponding secretary and an executive committee and a president
and two vice-presidents, and a lot more that I can't remember. Everyone of
them is leaving everything to somebody else to attend to. I know, because
I take care of all the lecturers that come. Only last winter a lady
lecturer arrived here on a load of wood; she didn't lose her temper and
get mad like you did. Maybe you know her; she told us all about the
Indians and her husband, the great general, who was surrounded and
massacred by them.”
</p>
<p>
“Know her, Madam, not only do I know and love her, but the whole country
loves her. She is a saint, Madam, that the good Lord only allows to live
in this world because if she was transferred there would be no standard
left.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, but then you had considerable cause. The hired girl next door—she
sat next to my daughter—said she didn't blame you a mite.” (Somebody
was on my side, anyhow.) “Now come in to supper.”
</p>
<p>
The next morning I was up at dawn: I had to get up at dawn because the
omnibus made only one trip to the station, to catch the seven-o'clock
train. I went by the eight-ten, but a little thing like that never makes
any difference in Sheffield.
</p>
<p>
When the omnibus arrived it came on runners. Closer examination from the
window of the cosey room—the bedroom was even more delightful—revealed
a square furniture van covered on the outside with white canvas, the door
being in the middle, like a box-car. I bade the dear old lady and her
daughter good-by, opened the hall door and stood on the top step. The
driver, a stout, fat-faced fellow, looked up with an inquiring glance.
</p>
<p>
“Nice morning,” I cried in my customary cheerful tone—the dear woman
had wrought the change.
</p>
<p>
“You bet! Got over your mad?”
</p>
<p>
The explosion had evidently been heard all over the village.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” I laughed, as I crawled in beside two other passengers.
</p>
<p>
“You was considerable het up last night, so Si was tellin' me,” remarked
the passenger, helping me with one bag.
</p>
<p>
I nodded. Who Si might be was not of special interest, and then again the
subject had now lost its inflammatory feature.
</p>
<p>
The woman made no remark; she was evidently one of the secretaries.
</p>
<p>
“Well, by gum, if they had left me where they left you last night, and you
a plumb stranger, I'd rared and pitched a little myself,” continued the
man. “When you come again—”
</p>
<p>
“Come again! Not by a—”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, yes, you will. You did them Hard-shells a lot of good! You just bet
your bottom dollar they'll look out for the next one of you fellows that
comes up here!”
</p>
<p>
The woman continued silent. She would have something to say about any
return visit of mine, and she intended to say it out loud if the time ever
came!
</p>
<p>
The station now loomed into sight. I sprang out and tried the knob. I knew
all about that knob—every twist and turn of it.
</p>
<p>
“Locked again!” I shouted, “and I've got to wait here an hour in this—”
</p>
<p>
“Hold on—<i>hold on</i>—” shouted back the driver. “Don't
break loose again. I got the key.”
</p>
<p>
My mail a week later brought me a county paper containing this statement:
“The last lecturer, owing to some error on the part of the committee, was
not met at the train and was considerably vexed. He said so to the
audience and to the committee. Everybody was satisfied with his talk until
they heard what they had to pay for it. He also said that he had left his
dress suit in his trunk. If what we hear is true, he left his manners with
it.” On reflection, the editor was right—<i>I had</i>.
</p>
<div style="height: 6em;">
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<pre xml:space="preserve">
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