From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book

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Bangs John Kendrick. From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book

I. GETTING USED TO IT

II. SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY

III. GETTING THE LEVEL

IV. THE GOOD SAMARITAN

V. A VAGRANT POET

VI. BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENTS

VII. FRIENDS OF THE ROAD

VIII. CHAIRMEN I HAVE MET

IX. CHANCE ACQUAINTANCES

X. HUMORS OF THE ROAD

XI. MINE HOST

XII. PERILS OF THE PLATFORM

XIII. EMBARRASSING MOMENTS

XIV "SLINGS AND ARROWS"

XV. EMERGENCIES

XVI. A PIONEER MANAGER

Отрывок из книги

In traveling about the country, and especially in the South, I have been impressed with the wisdom of the character in Owen Wister's delightful story of "The Virginian," who when another man applied an unspeakable name to him leveled a revolver in the speaker's face, and said, "When you call me that, say it with a smile!" (I quote from memory.) A moment on the road is made cheerful or difficult by the manner in which things are said, and the wanderer's homesickness is either relieved or deepened by the manner of a chance remark, which brings cheer if it be smiling, and a deeper sense of loneliness if it be otherwise.

Throughout the South I have never felt quite so far away from home as in some parts of New England less than a hundred miles from my own rooftree, and I think that this is due largely to the positive effort on the part of the average Southern man or woman to maintain the traditional courtesy and hospitality of the South toward the stranger within its gates. It is only semi-occasionally that one finds in some sour-natured relic of other days any other attitude than that of smiling welcome, and even with the thermometer ranging close to the zero mark I have learned why the Southland is in spirit anyhow the "Land of Roses."

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"An' that ain't all, neither, suh," he went on. "I'd ha' felt a great sight worse about it if we'd been licked, suh. If we'd been licked in that great fight, suh, I don't think I'd evah have got ovah it, suh."

I maintained a discreet silence; for I could not but feel that I was on the verge of a great philosophical discovery.

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