Category: Humour

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

E-text prepared by Steve Read, Suzanne Shell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)

Chapters

1. Part 1

E-text prepared by Steve Read, Suzanne Shell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/C...

2. Part 2

On returning to my place in the sleeper I noticed in the section directly across the aisle a handsome Englishwoman, traveling with no other companion than a little daughter, a c...

3. Part 3

No one would be so foolish as to deny, however, that audiences do vary materially in their capacity to take in the subtler points of a lecture "fired" at them from the platform....

4. Part 4

On one occasion in the Far West I was so close to a scene of actual murder that I might readily have been held as a material witness, and escaped that great inconvenience only b...

5. Part 5

"Well, they'll be ready for you when you arrive," he chuckled. "They've got your picture plastered all over the place. It's in every drug-store and saloon window in the town. Th...

6. Part 6

"Oh, Mr. Bangs," she said with an enthusiasm so delightful that I listened eagerly for the honeyed words to come, "we are so glad you came! _You have made our disappointment com...

7. Part 7

But to return to the engineers: I have always cherished the memory of a stolid old graybeard in command of a special train circumstances once compelled me to hire in order to me...

8. Part 8

"And to-night, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "Mr. Bangs has come to us to give us his famous lecture on--ahem--on--er--he has come, I say, to give us his inimitable talk on--e...

9. Part 9

But even if the charge were true--which of course it is not--that we no longer have any purveyors of humor of the first class upon whom we may rely for a service as regular as i...

10. Part 10

for I verily believe that in nine cases out of ten the landlords of the nation are in point of fact doing the "best they can," and in many instances in the face of heart-breakin...

11. Part 11

"Yes," said I. "I have an excellent accident insurance policy, and it is a great comfort. Sometimes on dark nights when I am suddenly awakened by some catastrophic quivering of...

12. Part 12

I shall never forget the expression of serene immunity from care on the face of one of my editorial chiefs when some years ago I told him that I was very much embarrassed by cer...

13. Part 13

"I am very much afraid, Mr. Bangs," said he, "that that idea you Americans have that we British are sometimes a trifle sluggish in our perception of the subtler points of an Ame...

14. Part 14

There was present every element of a tragedy of fearful proportions; but from that assembled multitude of young people came not even a scream, and on every side I saw stalwart y...

15. Part 15

The particular rattledy-bang old combination of wabbling wheels and hair-erupting cushions into which I was ushered was drawn by a white horse, and driven by a colored man. The...

16. Part 16

It happened that somewhere about the beginning of this century I was invited to prepare for a New York newspaper syndicate a series of satirical biographies of prominent persona...