Bok, who accompanied him, had not a moment to themselves from early morning to midnight.Yet his large correspondence was following him from the office, and the inevitable invitations in each city had at least to be acknowledged.Bok realized he had miscalculated the benefits of a lecture tour to his work, and began hopefully to wish for the ending of the circuit.
One afternoon as he was returning with his manager from a large reception, the "impresario" said to him: "I don't like these receptions.
They hurt the house."
"The house?" echoed Bok.
"Yes, the attendance."
"But you told me the house for this evening was sold out?" said the lecturer.
"That is true enough.House, and even the stage.Not a seat unsold.But hundreds just come to see you and not to hear your lecture, and this exposure of a lecturer at so crowded a reception as this, before the talk, satisfies the people without their buying a ticket.My rule is that a lecturer should not be seen in public before his lecture, and Iwish you would let me enforce the rule with you.It wears you out, anyway, and no receptions until afterward will give you more time for yourself and save your vitality for the talk."Bok was entirely acquiescent.He had no personal taste for the continued round of functions, but he had accepted it as part of the game.
The idea from this talk that impressed Bok, however, with particular force, was that the people who crowded his houses came to see him and not to hear his lecture.Personal curiosity, in other words.This was a new thought.He had been too busy to think of his personality; now he realized a different angle to the situation.And, much to his manager's astonishment, two days afterwards Bok refused to sign an agreement for another tour later in the year.He had had enough of exhibiting himself as a curiosity.He continued his tour; but before its conclusion fell ill--a misfortune with a pleasant side to it, for three of his engagements had to be cancelled.
The Saint Joseph engagement could not be cancelled.The house had been oversold; it was for the benefit of a local charity which besought Bok by wire after wire to keep a postponed date.He agreed, and he went.He realized that he was not well, but he did not realize the extent of his mental and physical exhaustion until he came out on the platform and faced the crowded auditorium.Barely sufficient space had been left for him and for the speaker's desk; the people on the stage were close to him, and he felt distinctly uncomfortable.
Then, to his consternation, it suddenly dawned upon him that his tired mind had played a serious trick on him.He did not remember a line of his lecture; he could not even recall how it began! He arose, after his introduction, in a bath of cold perspiration.The applause gave him a moment to recover himself, but not a word came to his mind.He sparred for time by some informal prefatory remarks expressing regret at his illness and that he had been compelled to disappoint his audience a few days before, and then he stood helpless! In sheer desperation he looked at Mrs.Bok sitting in the stage box, who, divining her husband's plight, motioned to the inside pocket of his coat.He put his hand there and pulled out a copy of his lecture which she had placed there! The whole tragic comedy had happened so quickly that the audience was absolutely unaware of what had occurred, and Bok went on and practically read his lecture.But it was not a successful evening for his audience or for himself, and the one was doubtless as glad when it was over as the other.
When he reached home, he was convinced that he had had enough of lecturing! He had to make a second short tour, however, for which he had contracted with another manager before embarking on the first.This tour took him to Indianapolis, and after the lecture, James Whitcomb Riley gave him a supper.There were some thirty men in the party; the affair was an exceedingly happy one; the happiest that Bok had attended.He said this to Riley on the way to the hotel.
"Usually," said Bok, "men, for some reason or other, hold aloof from me on these lecture tours.They stand at a distance and eye me, and I see wonder on their faces rather than a desire to mix.""You've noticed that, then?" smilingly asked the poet.
"Yes, and I can't quite get it.At home, my friends are men.Why should it be different in other cities?""I'll tell you," said Riley."Five or six of the men you met to-night were loath to come.When I pinned them down to their reason, it was Ithought: they regard you as an effeminate being, a sissy.""Good heavens!" interrupted Bok.
"Fact," said Riley, "and you can't wonder at it nor blame them.You have been most industriously paragraphed, in countless jests, about your penchant for pink teas, your expert knowledge of tatting, crocheting, and all that sort of stuff.Look what Eugene Field has done in that direction.These paragraphs have, doubtless, been good advertising for your magazine, and, in a way, for you.But, on the other hand, they have given a false impression of you.Men have taken these paragraphs seriously and they think of you as the man pictured in them.It's a fact; I know.It's all right after they meet you and get your measure.
The joke then is on them.Four of the men I fairly dragged to the dinner this evening said this to me just before I left.That is one reason why I advise you to keep on lecturing.Get around and show yourself, and correct this universal impression.Not that you can't stand when men think of you, but it's unpleasant."It was unpleasant, but Bok decided that the solution as found in lecturing was worse than the misconception.From that day to this he never lectured again.
But the public conception of himself, especially that of men, awakened his interest and amusement.Some of his friends on the press were still busy with their paragraphs, and he promptly called a halt and asked them to desist."Enough was as good as a feast," he told them, and explained why.
