XV
IN THE SUNSHINE WITH GREAT PREACHERS
I am Nicknamed “The Theological Comedian.”—My Friend, Henry Ward Beecher.—Our Trip Through Scotland and Ireland.—His Quickness of Repartee.—He and Ingersoll Exchange Words.—Ingersoll’s Own Sunshine.—De Witt Talmage on the Point of View.—He Could Even Laugh at Caricatures of His Own Face.—Dr. Parkhurst on Strict Denominationalism.
Nat Goodwin once nicknamed me “The Theological Comedian,” because many of my entertainments were given in churches. On such occasions a minister would generally preface the proceedings with prayer—whether that I, or the people, might be strengthened for the ordeal I never was able to discover. But the ministers always laughed at every joke I cracked, so there is a very warm spot in my heart for them.
One of the first of the profession I ever met was Henry Ward Beecher. I became well acquainted with him and—of far more consequence, he was always friendly, fatherly and merry when I met him. I had the pleasure of traveling through Scotland and Ireland with him, and no man could have been better company. Yet he was not traveling merely for pleasure. Wherever he went and was known the people welcomed him effusively, insisted on hearing from him, so whenever he spoke in a church or Sunday-school he had a crowded house.
“Getting Properly Dismal for Sunday.”
We spent one Sunday together in Glasgow, and the depression of that city on the holy day cannot be imagined. I have heard that some Scotchmen get full of bad whiskey on Saturday night for the sole purpose of being properly dismal on Sunday, but perhaps that is not true. But the street cars do not run; there is no sign of animation; the very houses look as dull as if they were untenanted; to a person accustomed to the cheer and bright faces of Americans on Sunday the town seemed enveloped in the gloom of death.
In the morning I awoke very early; I veritably believe that the appalling silence disturbed my slumbers. I felt so lonely and dismal that I instinctively went over to Mr. Beecher’s room; better a drowsy American than a whole city full of wide-awake Scotchmen—on a Scotch Sunday. Mr. Beecher was also awake, though in bed, and in spite of the morning being quite chilly he lay with one toe uncovered. I said:
“Mr. Beecher, aren’t you afraid of catching cold?”
“Oh, no,” he replied, “I always sleep that way.” I was greatly mystified at this, and asked him the reason. He laughed—and what a laugh he had! It was as big and solid and enduring as the Berkshire hills amid which he was born. Then he replied:
“Marshall, that toe is the key to the situation.”
In Ireland we went about a good deal together in jaunting cars and extracted a lot of high-grade Hibernian wit from the drivers. Although Mr. Beecher was one of the sensible souls who could discern the difference between poverty and misery, he had an American’s innate soft spot in his heart for a man in rags, so he overpaid our drivers so enormously that Mrs. Beecher, who was with us, begged that she might be allowed to do the disbursing.
One day we were driven to our hotel in Belfast through a drizzling rain. When I paid the driver I said:
“Are you wet, Pat?” With a merry twinkle of his eye he replied:
“Sure, your honor, if I was as wet outside as I am inside, I’d be as dry as a bone.”
Mr. Beecher’s quickness at repartee, of which Americans knew well, was entirely equal to Irish demands upon it. One day in Ireland, after he had made an address to a Sunday-school, a bewitching young colleen came up to where we stood chatting and said:
“Mr. Beecher, you have won my heart.”
“Well,” replied the great man quickly, with a sunburst of a smile, “you can’t get along without a heart, so suppose you take mine?”
Which reminds me of the day when he and Col. “Bob” Ingersoll were on the platform together at a public meeting and Beecher went over and shook hands heartily with the great agnostic, though he knew that the act would bring a storm of criticism from people with narrow-gauge souls. Then Ingersoll brought up one of his daughters and introduced her, saying:
“Mr. Beecher, here is a girl who never read the Bible.” Bob delighted in shocking ministers, but he missed his fun that time, for Beecher quickly replied:
“If all heathen were so charming I am sure we should all become missionaries.”
Ingersoll himself was as quick as the quickest at repartee. One day a malignant believer in an awful time for the wicked after death asked him:
“Are you trying to abolish hell?”
“If all Heathen were as Charming.”
“Yes,” said Ingersoll.
“Well, you can’t do it.”
“You’ll be sorry if I don’t,” the Colonel replied.
Agnostic though he was, Ingersoll is frequently quoted by preachers, for in one respect he was very like the best of them; he never wearied of urging men to right living, not through fear of eternal punishment, but because goodness is its own excuse for being. No pastor was ever more severe than he in condemnation of everything mean and wicked in human life, so he was worthy of place among the great teachers of ethics. Personally he was as kind, sympathetic and helpful as some ministers are not; whatever he thought of systematic theology, he was practically a teacher of the brotherhood of man as defined by the founder of Christianity. In his lighter moments he was one of the merriest companions that any one could meet; no matter what he had to say, he would always illustrate it with a story. One day he was talking of people who have a knack of saying the right thing at the wrong time, and told the following, as a sample:
A well-to-do merchant out west lived in a town not remarkable for much but malaria and funerals. His wives had a way of dying, and whenever he lost one he went into another county and married again. A loquacious lady in the healthy county kindly assisted him in finding young women who were willing to marry him and take the chances. About six months after burying his fourth wife he appeared again in the healthy county, called on his friend and was greeted with:
“How’s your wife, Mr. Thompson?”
“She’s dead,” he replied sadly.
“What? Dead again?” the woman cried.
Ingersoll was full of stories hinging on the place he believed did not exist. Here is one of them:
“His Wives had a Way of Dying.”
A man who wanted to visit hell was advised to buy an excursion ticket. He did so, and when the train stopped at a place full of beautiful trees, warbling birds and bright sunshine he did not get off. The conductor said:
“I thought you wanted hell?”
“Is this hell?” the passenger asked; “I didn’t think it looked like this.” Then he walked about and met a man to whom he said:
“I am surprised to find hell such a beautiful place.”
“Well,” the man replied, “you must remember that there have been a great many clever people here for many years, so the place has greatly improved. You ought to have seen it when I came here.”
“Indeed? And who are you?”
“I am Voltaire.”
“I am very glad to meet you, Voltaire, and I wish you would do me a favor.”
“With pleasure. What is it?”
“Get some one to buy my return ticket, please.”
Colonel Ingersoll arrived late one evening at a Clover Club dinner in Philadelphia, to which he had been invited, and while looking for his seat he regarded the decorations so admiringly that Governor Bunn exclaimed:
“You’ve found heaven at last, Colonel, and a place waiting for you.”
At a Lambs’ Club dinner in New York, of which the late Steele MacKaye was chairman, Ingersoll was formally introduced and made a speech, in the course of which he made so unfortunate a remark about Deity that he sat down amid silence so profound as to be painful. MacKaye arose and with admirable tact brought the Club and the speaker en rapport by saying:
“Gentlemen, we all know that Colonel Ingersoll dare not believe in God, but those of us who know Colonel Ingersoll and do believe in God know that God believes in him.”
The late T. DeWitt Talmage never lost a chance to emphasize a point with a good story. As I knew him to be a good man and a first-rate fellow, I used to be indignant at newspaper abuse of him, and particularly with some caricatures that were made of his expressive features. I took occasion to tell him of this, but he replied:
“Marshall, I’m as thick-skinned as a rhinoceros, and I never mind what is said about me. Some of the caricatures annoy me, but only because they pain people I love—my wife and family. You see, my boy, it doesn’t pay to be too sensitive, for it breaks a man up, and that’s the worst thing that can happen to him if he has any duties in the world. Besides, everything depends on the point of view. Once a German family emigrated to America and settled in Milwaukee. The oldest son, in his teens, concluded he would start out for himself. He ‘fetched up’ in New York, and without any money, so he wrote home, ‘Dear father, I am sick and lonely and without a single cent. Send me some money quick. Your son John.’ The old man couldn’t read, so he took the letter to a friend—a great strapping butcher with a loud gruff voice and an arrogant manner of reading. When the letter was read to him the father was furious and declared he would not send his son a cent—not even to keep him from starving. But on his way home he kept thinking about the letter and wanting to hear it again, so he took it to another friend—a consumptive undertaker who had a gentle voice with an appealing inflection in it. When this man read the letter the father burst into tears and exclaimed, ‘My poor boy! I shall send him all the money he wants.’ You see, the same thing viewed from a different point takes on a different color.”
After the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst visited some notorious New York “dives” and preached his famous sermon on New York politics he was the sensation of the day and also one of the best abused men in the land. He was besieged by reporters until he had scarcely time to say his prayers and came to hate the sight of a newspaper man. About that time I was making a trip to Rochester and saw Dr. Parkhurst enter the car I was in. I said to some friends:
“That is Dr. Parkhurst. Now watch me; I’m going to have some fun with him.”
His chair was at the other end of the car and he was having a good time with newspapers and magazines and far away, as he supposed, from reporters. I passed and repassed him two or three times; then, assuming as well as I could the manner of a newspaper man I stopped and said:
“Dr. Parkhurst, I believe?”
He looked up with a savage frown, and I saw that he took me for one of the tormenting fraternity. I continued in an insinuating, tooth-drawing manner until he became so chilling that I could hear the thermometer falling with heavy thuds. When I felt that I had made him as uncomfortable as I could I said,
“Pardon me, Doctor, but evidently you don’t remember me.” Then I handed him my card. His manner changed like a cloudy day when the sun breaks through, and he said cordially:
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Wilder. I mistook you for a reporter.”
“I thought, you would,” I replied, “for that’s what I was trying to make you believe.”
We laughed together and for the remainder of the trip we were close companions. He is a delightful talker, full of anecdotes and reminiscences. I never met a keener lover of good stories than he, and, beside being an appreciative listener, he is so good a raconteur himself that a listener is willing that he should do all the story telling. He has no patience with narrow, hide-bound denominationalists; he defined them by telling me a story of a minister who preached a sermon so touching that all his hearers were melted to tears—all but one man. When asked how he had succeeded in keeping his eyes dry the man replied:
“Well, you see, this isn’t my church.”