Chapter 3

The Secretary of the Club and I went up the narrow stairs to the stage. As we stood there behind the curtain I looked at the pleasant-faced man. "You didn't detect the odor of burning wood down there, did you?" I asked.

"No; but you see the windows are open, and there are bonfires outside, I suppose."

"I am a fool," I thought; "and James Whitcomb Riley was right when he said that the speaker who is about to make his bow to an audience is always so keyed up that at the moment he is incapable of sane thinking."

I excused myself and walked over to an open window at the back of the stage and looked down.

It must have been forty feet to the stony street beneath.

Then I went to a side window and threw up the sash. This window looked out on a roof ten or twelve feet below. I got a broken broom that stood in the corner and propped the window open.

The thought of fire was upon me and I was inwardly planning what I would do in case of a stampede. I am always thinking about what I would do should this or that happen. Nothing can surprise me--not even death. If any of my best helpers should leave me, I have it all planned exactly whom I will put in their places. I have it arranged who will take my own place--my will is made and my body is to be cremated.

"Cremated? Not tonight!" I said to myself, as I placed the broom under the sash. "If a panic occurs, the people will go out of the doors and I will stick to the stage until my coat-tails singe. I'll say that the fire is in an adjoining building; then I'll smilingly bow myself off the stage and gently drop out of that window."

"All ready when you are," said Mr. Fass.

I passed out on the stage before that vast sea of faces.

It was a glorious sight. There was a row of military men from the French warship in the harbor, down in front; priests, and ladies with sparkling diamonds; a bishop wearing a purple vestment under his black gown sat to one side; a stout lady in decollete waved a feather fan in rhythmic, mystic motion, far back to the left.

The audience applauded encouragingly, I wished I was back in that dear East Aurora. But I began.

In a few minutes my heart ceased to thump and I knew we were off.

I spoke for two hours, and I spoke well.

I did not push the lecture in front of me, nor did I drag it behind. I got the chancery twist on it and carried it off big, as I do about one time in ten. I finished in a whirlwind of applause, with the bishop crying "Bravo!" and the fat lady with the fifty-dollar feather fan beaming approbation.

Fass stood in the wings to congratulate me.

I shook hands with a hundred. The house slowly emptied. I bade the genial Fass good-by. He took my hand in both of his. "You will come back! You must come back!" he said.

He walked with me, bareheaded, to my carriage.

He again pressed my hand.

I rode to my hotel and went to bed, and to sleep.

I was awakened by a bright glare of light that filled my room.

I got up and looked at my watch. It was just midnight.

Off to the East I saw red tongues of angry flame streaking the sky from horizon to zenith.

"It is the Jewish Club, all right," I said.

I pulled down the blind and went back to bed.

When I went down to breakfast at seven o'clock in the morning, I heard the newsboys in the streets crying, "All about the fire!" I bought a paper and read the headline, "Hubbard's Lecture Hot Stuff!"

I walked out Saint Charles Avenue and viewed the smoldering ruins where only a few hours before I had spoken to more than two thousand people--where the bishop in purple vestment had cried "Bravo!" and the stout lady with feathered fan had beamed approval.

"Was anybody hurt?" I asked one of the policemen on guard.

"Only one man killed--Fass, the Secretary; I believe he lies somewhere over there to the left, beneath that toppled wall."

The person who reasons from a false premise is always funny--to other folks.

UNCLE JOE AND AUNT MELINDA

The opinion prevails all through the truly rural districts that the big cities are for the most part given over to Confidence Men.

And the strange part is that the opinion is correct.

But it should not be assumed that all the people in, say, Buffalo, are moral derelicts--there are many visitors there, most of the time, from other sections.

And while at all times one should exercise caution, yet to assume that the party who is "fresh" is intent on high crimes and misdemeanors may be a rather hasty and unjust generalization.

For instance, there are Uncle Joe and Aunt Melinda, who live eight miles back from East Aurora, at Wales Hollow. They had been married for forty-seven years, and had never taken a wedding-journey. They decided to go to Buffalo and spend two days at a hotel regardless of expense.

Much had been told them about the Confidence Men who hang around the railroad-station, and they were prepared.

They arrived at East Aurora, where they were to take the train, an hour ahead of time. The Jerkwater came in and they were duly seated, when all at once Uncle Joe rushed for the door, jumped off and made for the waiting-room looking for his carpetbag. It was on the train all right, but he just forgot, and feeling sure he had left it in the station made the grand skirmish as aforesaid.

The result was that the train went off and left your Uncle Joseph.

Aunt Melinda was much exercised, but the train-hands pacified her by assurances that her husband would follow on the next train, and she should simply wait for him in the depot at Buffalo.

Now the Flyer was right behind the Jerkwater, and Uncle Joe took the Flyer and got to Buffalo first. When the Jerkwater came in, Uncle Joe was on the platform waiting for Aunt Melinda.

As she disembarked he approached her.

She shied and passed on.

He persisted in his attentions.

Then it was that she shook her umbrella at him and bade him hike. The eternally feminine in her nature prompted self-preservation. She banked on her reason--woman's reason--not her intuition. She had started first--her husband could only come on a later train.

"Go 'way and leave me alone," she shouted in shrill falsetto. "You have got yourself up to look like my Joe--and that idiotic grin on your homely face is just like my Joe, but no city sharper can fool me, and if you don't go right along I'll call for the perlice!"

She called for the police, and Uncle Joe had to show a strawberry-mark to prove his identity, before he received recognition.

To be your brother's keeper is beautiful if you do not cease to be his friend.

BILLY AND THE BOOK

One day last Winter in New York I attended a police court on a side street, just off lower Broadway. I was waiting to see my old friend Rosenfeld in the Equitable Life Building, but as his office didn't open up until nine o'clock, I put in my time at the police court.

There was the usual assortment of drunks, petty thieves--male and female, black, white and coffee-colored--disorderlies, vagabonds and a man in full-dress suit and a wide expanse of dull ecru shirt-bosom.

The place was stuffy, foul-smelling, and reeked with a stale combination of tobacco and beer and patchouli, and tears, curses, fear and promises unkept.

The Judge turned things off, but without haste. He showed more patience and consideration than one usually sees on the bench. His judgments seemed to be gentle and just.

The courtroom was clearing, and I started to go.

As I was passing down the icy steps a piping child's voice called to me, "Mister, please give me a lift!"

There at the foot of the steps, standing in the snow, was a slender slip of a girl, yellow and earnest, say ten years old, with a shawl pinned over her head. She held in her hand a rope, and this rope was tied to a hand-sled. On this sled sat a little boy, shivering, dumpy and depressed, his bare red hands clutching the seat.

"Mister, I say, please give me a lift!"

"Sure!" I said.

It was a funny sight.

This girl seemed absolutely unconscious of herself. She was not at all abashed, and very much in earnest about something.

Evidently she had watched the people coming out and had waited until one appeared that she thought safe to call on for help.

"Of course I'll give you a lift--what is it you want me to do?"

"I've got to go inside and see the Judge. It's about my brudder here. He is six, goin' on seven, and they sent him home from school 'cause they said he wasn't old enough. I'm going to have that teacher 'rested. I've got the Bible here that says he's six years old. If you'll carry the book I'll bring Billy and the sled!"

"Where is the Bible?" I asked.

"Billy's settin' on it."

It was a big, black, greasy Family Bible, evidently a relic of better days. It had probably been hidden under the bed for safety.

The girl grappled the sled with one hand, and with the other Billy's little red fist.

I followed, carrying the big, black, greasy Family Bible.

Evidently this girl had been here before. She walked around the end of the judicial bar, and laid down the sled. Then she took the Bible out of my hands. It was about all she could do to lift it.

In a shrill, piping voice, full of business, and very much in earnest, she addressed the Judge: "I say, Mister Judge, they sent my brudder Billy away from school, they did. He's six, goin' on seven, and I want that teacher 'rested and brought here so you can tell her to let Billy go to school. Here is our Family Bible--you can see for yourself how old Billy is!"

The Judge adjusted his glasses, stared, and exclaimed, "God bless my soul!"

Then he called a big, blue-coated officer over and said: "Mike, you go with this little girl and her brother, and tell that teacher, if possible, to allow the boy to go to school; that I say he is old enough. You understand! If you do not succeed, come back and tell me why."

The officer smiled and saluted.

The big policeman took the little boy in his arms. The girl carried the sled, and I followed with the Family Bible.

The officer looked at me--"Newspaper man, I s'pose?"

"Yes," I said.

"What paper?"

"The American."

"It's the best ever."

"I think so--possibly with a few exceptions."

"She's the queerest lot yet, is this kid," and the big bluecoat jerked his thumb toward the girl.

I suggested that we go to the restaurant across the way and get a bite of something to eat.

"I'm not hungry," said the officer, "but the youngsters look as if they hadn't et since day before yesterday."

We lined up at the counter.

The officer drank two cups of coffee and ate a ham sandwich, two hard-boiled eggs, a plate of cakes and a piece of pie.

The girl and her brother each had a plate of cakes, a piece of pie and a glass of milk.

"What's yours?" asked the waiter.

"Same," said I.

As I did not care for the cakes, the officer cleaned the plate for me.

I didn't have time to go to the school, but the officer assured me that he would "fix it," and he winked knowingly, as if he had looked after such things before. He was kind, but determined, and I had confidence he would see that the little boy was duly admitted.

I started up the street alone.

They went the other way. The officer carried the little boy.

The girl with the shawl over her head followed, pulling the hand-sled, and on the sled rested the big, black Family Bible. I lost sight of them as they turned the corner.

An act is only a crystallized thought.

JOHN THE BAPTIST AND SALOME

John the Baptist, the strong, fine youth, came up out of the wilderness crying in the streets of Jerusalem, "Repent ye! Repent ye!"

Salome heard the call and from her window looked with half- closed, catlike eyes upon the semi-naked, young fanatic.

She smiled, did this idle creature of luxury, as she lay there amid the cushions on her couch, and gazed through the casement upon the preacher in the street.

Suddenly a thought came to her.

She arose on her elbow--she called her slaves.

They clothed her in a gaudy gown, dressed her hair, and led her forth.

Salome followed the wild, weird, religious enthusiast.

She pushed through the crowd and placed herself near the man, so the smell of her body would reach his nostrils.

His eyes ranged the swelling lines of her body.

Their eyes met.

She half-smiled and gave him that look which had snared the soul of many another.

But he only gazed at her with passionless, judging intensity and repeated his cry, "Repent ye. Repent ye, for the day is at hand!"

Her reply, uttered soft and low, was this: "I would kiss thy lips!"

He moved away and she reached to seize his garment, repeating, "I would kiss thy lips--I would kiss thy lips!"

He turned aside, and forgot her, as he continued his warning cry, and went his way.

The next day she waylaid the youth again; as he came near she suddenly and softly stepped forth and said in that same low, purring voice, "I would kiss thy lips!"

He repulsed her with scorn.

She threw her arms about him and sought to draw his head down near hers.

He pushed her from him with sinewy hands, sprang as from a pestilence, and was lost in the pressing throng.

That night she danced before Herod Antipas, and when the promise was recalled that she should have anything she wished, she named the head of the only man who had ever turned away from her. "The head of John the Baptist on a charger!"

In an hour the wish was gratified.

Two eunuchs stood before Salome with a silver tray bearing its fearsome burden.

The woman smiled--a smile of triumph, as she stepped forth with tinkling feet.

A look of pride came over the painted face.

Her jeweled fingers reached into the blood-matted hair. She lifted the head aloft, and the bracelets on her brown, bare arms fell to her shoulders, making strange music. Her face pressed the face of the dead.

In exultation she exclaimed, "I have kissed thy lips!"

He who influences the thought of his time influences the thought of all the time that follows. And he has made his impress upon eternity.

THE MASTER

Giovanni Bellini was his name.

Yet when people who loved beautiful pictures spoke of "Gian," every one knew who was meant; but to those who worked at art he was "The Master." He was two inches under six feet in height, strong and muscular. In spite of his seventy summers his carriage was erect, and there was a jaunty suppleness about his gait that made him seem much younger. In fact, no one would have believed he had lived over his threescore and ten, were it not for the iron-gray hair that fluffed out all around under the close-fitting black cap, and the bronzed complexion--sun-kissed by wind and by weather--which formed a trinity of opposites that made people turn and stare.

Queer stories used to be told about him. He was a skilful gondolier, and it was the daily row back and forth from the Lido that gave him that face of bronze. Folks said he ate no meat and drank no wine, and that his food was simply ripe figs in the season, with coarse rye bread and nuts.

Then there was that funny old hunchback, a hundred years old at least, and stone-deaf, who took care of the gondola, spending the whole day, waiting for his master, washing the trim, graceful, blue-black boat, arranging the awning with the white cords and tassels, and polishing the little brass lions at the sides. People tried to question the old hunchback, but he gave no secrets away. The master always stood up behind and rowed; while down on the cushions rode the hunchback, the guest of honor.

There stood the master erect, plying the oar, his long black robe tucked up under the dark blue sash that exactly matched the color of the gondola. The man's motto might have been, "Ich Dien," or that passage of Scripture, "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." Suspended around his neck by a slender chain was a bronze medal, presented by vote of the Signoria when the great picture of "The Transfiguration" was unveiled. If this medal had been a crucifix, and you had met the wearer in San Marco, one glance at the finely chiseled features, the black cap and the flowing robe and you would have said at once the man was a priest, Vicar-General of some important diocese. But seeing him standing erect on the stern of a gondola, the wind caressing the dark gray hair, you would have been perplexed until your gondolier explained in serious undertone that you had just passed "the greatest Painter in all Venice, Gian, the Master."

Then, if you showed curiosity and wanted to know further, the gondolier would have told you more about this strange man.

The canals of Venice are the highways, and the gondoliers are like 'bus-drivers in Piccadilly--they know everybody and are in close touch with all the Secrets of State. When you get to the Gindecca and tie up for lunch, over a bottle of Chianti, your gondolier will tell you this:

The hunchback there in the gondola, rowed by the Master, is the Devil, who has taken that form just to be with and guard the greatest artist the world has ever seen. Yes, Signor, that clean-faced man with his frank, wide-open, brown eyes is in league with the Evil One. He is the man who took young Tiziano from Cadore into his shop, right out of a glass-factory, and made him a great artist, getting him commissions and introducing him everywhere! And how about the divine Giorgione who called him father? Oho!

And who is Giorgione? The son of some unknown peasant woman. And if Bellini wanted to adopt him, treat him as his son indeed, kissing him on the cheek when he came back just from a day's visit to Mestre, whose business was it! Oho!

Beside that, his name isn't Giorgione--it is Giorgio Barbarelli. And didn't this Giorgio Barbarelli, and Tiziano from Cadore, and Espero Carbonne, and that Gustavo from Nuremberg, and the others paint most of Gian's pictures? Surely they did. The old man simply washes in the backgrounds and the boys do the work. About all old Gian does is to sign the picture, sell it and pocket the proceeds. Carpaccio helps him, too--Carpaccio who painted the loveliest little angel sitting cross-legged playing the biggest mandolin you ever saw in your life.

That is genius, you know, the ability to get some one else to do the work, and then capture the ducats and the honors for yourself. Of course, Gian knows how to lure the boys on--something has to be done in order to hold them. Gian buys a picture from them now and then; his studio is full of their work--better than he can do. Oh, he knows a good thing when he sees it. These pictures will be valuable some day, and he gets them at his own price. It was Antonello of Messina who introduced oil-painting into Venice. Before that they mixed their paints with water, milk or wine. But when Antonello came along with his dark, lustrous pictures, he set all artistic Venice astir. Gian Bellini discovered the secret, they say, by feigning to be a gentleman and going to the newcomer and sitting for his picture. He it was who discovered that Antonello mixed his colors with oil. Oho!

Of course, not all of the pictures in his studio are painted by the boys: some are painted by that old Dutchman what's-his-name--oh, yes, Durer, Alberto Durer of Nuremberg. Two Nuremberg painters were in that very gondola last week just where you sit--they are here in Venice now, taking lessons from Gian, they said. Gian was up there to Nuremberg and lived a month with Durer--they worked together, drank beer together, I suppose, and caroused. Gian is very strict about what he does in Venice, but you can never tell what a man will do when he is away from home. The Germans are a roystering lot--but they do say they can paint. Me? I have never been up there--and do not want to go, either--there are no canals there. To be sure, they print books in Nuremberg. It was up there somewhere that they invented type, a lazy scheme to do away with writing. They are a thrifty lot--those Germans--they give me my fare and a penny more, just a single penny, and no matter how much I have talked and pointed out the wonderful sights, and imparted useful information, known to me alone--only one penny extra--think of it!

Yes, printing was first done at Mayence by a German, Gutenberg, about sixty years ago. One of Gutenberg's workmen went up to Nuremberg and taught others how to design and cast type. This man, Alberto Durer, helped them, designing the initials and making their title-pages by cutting the design on a wood block, then covering this block with ink, laying a sheet of paper upon it, placing it in a press, and then when the paper is lifted off it looks exactly like the original drawing. In fact, most people couldn't tell the difference, and here you can print thousands of them from the one block.

Bellini makes drawings for title-pages and initials for Aldus and Nicholas Jenson. Venice is the greatest printing place in the world, and yet the business began here only thirty years ago. The first book printed here was in Fourteen Hundred Sixty-nine, by John of Speyer. There are two hundred licensed printing-presses here, and it takes usually four men to a press--two to set the type and get things ready, and two to run the press. This does not count, of course, the men who write the books, and those who make the type and cut the blocks from which they print the pictures for the illustrations. At first, you know, the books they printed in Venice had no title-pages, initials or illustrations. My father was a printer and he remembers when the first large initials were printed--before that the spaces were left blank and the books were sent out to the monasteries to be completed by hand.

Gian and Gentile had a good deal to do about cutting the first blocks for initials--they got the idea, I think, from Nuremberg. And now there are Dutchmen down here from Amsterdam learning how to print books and paint pictures. Several of them are in Gian's studio, I hear--every once in a while I get them for a trip to the Lido or to Murano.

Gentile Bellini is his brother and looks very much like him. The Grand Turk at Constantinople came here once and saw Gian Bellini at work in the Great Hall. He had never seen a good picture before and was amazed. He wanted the Senate to sell Gian to him, thinking he was a slave. They humored the Pagan by hiring Gentile Bellini to go instead, loaning him out for two years, so to speak.

Gentile went, and the Sultan, who never allowed any one to stand before him, all having to grovel in the dirt, treated Gentile as an equal. Gentile even taught the old rogue to draw a little, and they say the painter had a key to every room in the palace, and was treated like a prince.

Well, they got along all right, until one day Gentile drew the picture of the head of John the Baptist on a charger.

"A man's head doesn't look like that when it is cut off," said the Grand Turk contemptuously. Gentile had forgotten that the Turk was on familiar ground.

"Perhaps the Light of the Sun knows more about painting than I do!" said Gentile, as he kept right on at his work.

"I may not know much about painting, but I'm no fool in some other things I might name," was the reply.