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All men write memoirs. Great commanders, in their old age, refight their battles with pen and ink. Magicians explain their magic. Confidence men, from their repentant cells, expound their bygone wickedness. Bar-tenders in the sunset of their lives write manuals on mixing drinks.

So let it be with me.

A year ago I retired from college lecturing, at the urgent request of the college trustees, who were very firm about it. Now, at the request of innumerable friends all over the country, I am retiring from lecturing on the public platform as a humorist.

This is a rôle I never dared to assume till many years after I had begun work as an academic lecturer. Indeed I first attempted it in order to raise money for the Belgian refugees during the Great War—either the audience must come or the Belgians must die. In this capacity I covered a great deal of ground in 1915 and 1916. Indeed the King of the Belgians had very generously said that he didn’t care how much ground I covered as long as I paid my own expenses.

It was very difficult at first. I remember that at my first ‘humorous’ lecture at St. John, New Brunswick, the Chairman announced it as ‘international law,’ and the audience believed him. I recall also a gloomy evening in Vermont when the Chairman, in rising to thank me, said in a solemn tone: ‘I forgot to mention, ladies and gentlemen, that this lecture was given for nothing. We didn’t give Mr. Leacock any fee, and we didn’t bring him here.’ That set everything right.

But in any case I was able to send quite a lot of money to the French town of Nantes where many refugees were. As I have elsewhere narrated, in my book on my Discovery of Western Canada, the Mayor of the town wrote and thanked me, and expressed admiration at the long journeys I had made. I imagine he used a French atlas of the days of Louis XIV and picked off it the only names he recognized. He wrote, ‘We observed, with admiration, that you have made the dangerous voyage of the Lake Superior and penetrated as far as Fort William and Duluth, in the country of the savages.’

But later on I acquired a certain facility in lecturing and received many compliments. My friend Irvin Cobb, who was lecturing on the public platform at the same time, once said that he had no hesitation in classing me as the second humorist in America. And the other day, when I spoke at Edmonton, the Chancellor of the University of Alberta said that he had never in his life listened to anything more brilliant, and that he hadn’t listened to more than a few opening sentences anyway. The Chief Justice of the Province, who was also present, concurred, except as to the opening sentences.

But perhaps the estimate of anybody’s talent made in his own home town is apt to be the most nearly correct. Such an estimate I got lately in my home town of Orillia, Ontario. It was at a dinner held in Carter’s Upstairs Dining Room—it’s just opposite Macnab’s Hardware; you can hardly miss it. The dinner was given in my honour by the Anti-Mosquito Society of East Simcoe, of which I am life President. In presenting me with a mosquito net the committee of reception spoke of me as ‘one of our foremost humorists of East Simcoe.’

So I can take my stand on that.

In spite of any success or encouragement in lecturing, the time came when I had to give it up. I had lectured in the East so often that I had said everything I knew to everybody who would listen. So I took a trip to the West and lectured all the way to the Pacific Ocean. After I had spoken in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, I realized that I must either stop lecturing or learn Japanese and go on.

So I have decided to take my place with the memoir-men. Here are my lectures. Here with them are a lot of odd stories that I used to drag into them as best I could; or, failing that, tell them to little gatherings of hospitable friends after the lectures, in that warm hour when the lecture is over and everyone delighted; or tell them to the Pullman car porter, man’s last friend.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

Montreal, Nov. 1, 1937.