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TWO INNOCENTS ASROAD
Sy Lamar Strickland Payne, Author "Twentieth Century Fables" and Joint Author of "The Mission Girl,” "The Limit of the Line,” Pte.
LETTER NUNSER TWO.
ARBOR OF SMYRNA, June 4, 1910.—Al
though it was not mentioned at the
time, in The Baltimore American, I like
this paper because it wanted to take
my photograph, I am satisfied that “The
Chief” and I escaped serious damage,
from the tail of Halley’s comet, by be
ing in the tunnel.
My ego was satisfied with the tunnel.
H
It was dark. It was dramatic'. It suggested Jules
Verne’s Topsy-Turvy. And then, an inch one way,
and we would have gone into smithereens against
the east wall, an inch the other way, and we would
have smashed like an egg, against the west wall.
It is marvelous what risks the Chief and I ran. And,
it would have been bad for him, as he has only
been married a year.
The tunnel leads into Baltimore, and it leads out
of Baltimore, for those who have dodged the red
cars and the black automobiles. It satisfied my ego
that we dodged them. We even passed the leading
undertaker, in a fast automobile, without serious
damage.
Comparisons are odious. I hate to be compared
with Uncle Remus, or Mark Twain, or even Sir Wal
ter Scott, unless the comparison is to my advantage.
Then I like it. But to get back to the play. I can
not compare the long train shed at Baltimore with
our $1,000,000 Terminal Station. The Terminal Sta
tion is marble and resembles a maelstrom. I said as
much in my first letter. And the Baltimore train
shed is wood and resembles the Dead Sea. But, you
see, it is at the end of the tunnel, and it must be
quiet, and, again, the Supreme Court of the United
States isn’t so very far away.
My ego was disappointed. I had followed the line
of least resistance, I had witnessed the “survival of
the fittest” aboard a Southern Railroad sleeper, and
I thought that I had a right to alight at a $10,000,-
000 Terminal Station. But, it came not to pass. My
vanity was hurt, and 1 went through the gates sad
of countenance. The Chief showed me a pretty,
blue-eyed telephone girl, in order that my sorrow
might not be too conspicuous. I began to think bet
ter of Baltimore.
Then the Chief called for a taxicab. He is accus
tomed to such things. I am not. I told him so. It
made no difference. I begged to be excused from
riding in a short-horned automobile. He insisted.
The taxi-boy, or the taxi-cab-i-feur said that the line
of least resistance was on the rear seat. He prom
ised that the cab wouldn’t climb the monuments.
This is the superlative assurance of safety, in Bal-
R. WILLIAM T. ELLIS tells a touching
story of Professor Hunt and his victory
over invalidism, in a recent issue of
The Christian Index. Professor Hunt
was stricken in the prime of life with
a malady that made him a hopeless
cripple for life. The community was
shocked and visits of condolence were
many. Most of the well-meaning sym-
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pathizers assumed that the promising career of the
sunny, athletic and clever teacher was at an end.
Fortunately the invalid’s own sense of humor saved
him from feeling many of the unmeant thrusts of
these Job’s comforters. He laughed as he talked the
matter over with his pastor.
“We have been having continuous funeral serv
ices in this room for a month; and lo the corpse is
still lively. I do not believe that I am ‘a dead dog,’
as Jonathan’s son with the long name and the lame
feet called himself. I can not teach again, I know;
and I’m bound to this bed forever. If I were a
genius instead of a commonplace ex-teacher in a
semi-rural high school, I suppose I’d compel the
world to make pilgrimages to this room. I’m not a
SHUT IN ANO SHUT OUT
timore. I reluctantly consented. I have never writ
ten the folks at home, about this adventure, as 1
had promised, before I left, not to run extreme risks.
But, listen! I rode down four, wide, beautiful ave
nues ,that 1 didn’t even know the names of!
The short-horned auto-motor car ran with an odd,
queer movement. It followed the line of least re
sistance. That is to say, it avoided the gullies, by
request. It circled them, I believe, in an oblique
spheroid. 1 would not attempt to draw this figure,
if I were you. It will give you mental fag. You had
better work on The Golden Age Contest. It was the
forewheels that cut this remarkable, mathematical,
oblique spheroid. The hindmost wheels, of course,
did the same thing. Any Professor of Mathematics
will explain this to you. Now, you understand how
it is? The reason for this military maneuvering was
on account of the Chief’s tender leg. I regretted
that my friends, Theodore Roosevelt and the Em
peror of Germany were not there to take it all in.
The oblique spheroids that the taxi-boy wove across
the gullies far surpassed the evolutions of the Ger
man army.
And on either side of the Appian Way—l learned
later that, it was Fulton avenue —rose canyons of
red, pressed brick apartment houses. They give the
city a cheerful appearance. I adjusted inyself to a
fierce environment. That is to say, red-brick apart
ment houses and white marble stoops and steps. I
have a suspicion that the Romans take off their
shoes, before they enter their dwellings, the steps
are so spotless, but, though I watched them, morn
ing, noon and night, I never was able to catch them
in the act. By the Romans I mean, Muriel, the Bal
timoreans !
I was in a new environment. My ego wished to
adjust itself to this new environment forthwith. But
it could not be done. Several things prevented. The
front yards were out in the middle of the street.
This prevented adjustment at once. Then, the door
lights were not, and I had difficulty in finding my
number, at night. This also prevented immediate
adjustment. But I learned how. It was this way:
The Chief and I missed our boarding place, the first
night out, and went wandering up the avenue —Two
Innocents Abroad. Our kind hostess hailed us. We
came back. We felt grateful for her thoughtfulness.
You see, we might have been lost. She explained
that we could locate the house, by the basement.
After that I took the Chief’s crutch, and punched
along the sidewalk, until I located the basement. I
felt a warm glow all over. It was adjustment to a
new environment. It was success. For, what, is suc
cess but an adjustment to a new environment?
genius, but I’m bound not to become a pale and
melancholy saint, flaunting his resignation in the
face of his friends. I really believe that I can make
life worth while, for is it not sound doctrine that a
man is more than a stout pair of legs and a strong
back?”
To nobody else did the invalid tell his hopes. A
discerning observer, though, could trace a definite
plan running through his subsequent course. In
the first place, he made his room attractive to his
friends; they who at first visited him out of sym
pathy soon came again for their own pleasure. With
in six months his intimates had ceased to think of
Professor Hunt, first of all, as an invalid; his per
sonality had triumphed over his limitations.
As a letter-writer the shut-in extended his influ
ence widely. Never a new baby came to his friends,
never a wedding, a birthday, a business promotion,
or other bit of good fortune without a note of con
gratulation from this man who had acquired the
great art of living in other people’s joys. So, too,
with letters of condolence. And every friend set
ting forth on a journey was sure of a bon voyage mes
sage from that little room.
The Golden Age for June 16, 1910.
Baltimore a Hard Field.
We were informed that people don’t go to church,
in Baltimore, during the week, in great quantities.
But, they went to the Fuller Memorial Baptist
Church, for a whole week, and heard the Chief lec
ture and preach. They even laughed over his lec
tures, “Schools and Fools,”’ “John and His Hat.”
And they should have paid $2 a lecture, for such
rolling laughter, but it was against the rules of the
church. It is astonishing the amount of people who
will come out to hear a. free thing. But, this is fol
lowing the line of least resistance, and that is suc
cess. And then the Chief was there to do all the
good that he could.
The Baltimore church spirit is metropolitan. The
church members, many of them, take to the Boule
vards, the small parks, and to the Patapsco, on the
Sabbath day, at rare intervals to the church pews!
They follow the line of least resistance. A pastor
never expects to find the fashionable element of his
congregation —at church! It is only the elect who
keep the pews from being entirely vacant, and the
very elect who ever reach a Wednesday night prayer
meeting.
It is only when the good man advertises that he
gets a crowd. And they all are gloriously guilty of
that. Nothing short of a theater scarehead stops
them.
Baltimore is spoken of as a hard field. It is. It
has killed out a good many tip-top preachers. They
rejoice exceedingly to go over the list of the slain
with you.
Then again, Baltimore is Catholic. The great Car
dinal Gibbons lives there. The Protestant clergy
speak well of him. He has the love of his own
church. He is wise-hearted in his public utterances.
He teaches prohibition by suggestion.
But, Baltimore has no respect for great men. It
treats Presidents and Governors and great publicists,
flippantly. That is carrying the spirit of Democracy
too far, and there is danger in it. It is not some
thing to laugh over, to cultivate, or to be proud of.
When a city or nation loses its respect for its
leaders, it loses its respect for itself; when it loses
its respect for itself, it loses its respect for others,
and, it is a scientific result, that moral anarchy and
social ruin may follow. Woe unto it! Woe unto it!
But, worst of all, lack of respect for its earthly lead
ers, may lead to lack of respect for the Heavenly,
and that to lack of reverence for the Supreme
Head, God the Father.
The Rock of Ages is cemented with respect and
upheld by reverence.
(To be continued.)
Naturally there was a return tide of correspond
ence. In increasing numbers dwellers in lands afar,
foreign missionaries, high school boys who had gone
abroad on business and friends of friends counted
this cheery, newsy and entertaining letter-writer
among their regular correspondents. This all quick
ened Professor Hunt’s interest in and knowledge
of foreign conditions; so one day he ventured to
write to the editor of the metropolitan paper which
he read daily (for the local journal did not give
him a wide enough outlook on the big world to sat
isfy him), a letter supplementing and explaining an
obscure foreign dispatch. This was printed and so
were other letters which he wrote for different pub
lications, for he had quickly perceived the influence
which even the most obscure person may wield
through the widely-read newspaper press.
Every meeting of the old debating society at the
high school and every prayer meeting of the church
was certain to hear something from the shut-in mem
ber. Sometimes it was a letter, sometimes a little
essay, or an appropriate clipping, or quoted aphor
ism, or a bit of poetry. Always it was interesting
(Continued on Page 8.)
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