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

Before podcasts, before TED talks, there was the American lecture circuit: a world of smoke-filled railroad cars, provincial hotels, and audiences hungry for wisdom and entertainment in equal measure. John Kendrick Bangs, the Harvard-educated humorist who gave us the jaunty Roger Sheringham and the headless specters of HOUSE-BOAT ON THE STYX, turns his wickedly funny eye on his own career in this collection of autobiographical sketches. The result is a affectionate portrait of the anxieties, indignities, and unexpected joys that came with being a professional speaker in the early 1900s. Bangs opens with a disarmingly honest confession: the terror before stepping onto stage, the cold sweat, the certain belief that oblivion awaits. He then populates his pages with the characters who made the journey bearable, from the encouraging Julia Ward Howe to the countless small-town impresarios, hotel clerks, and fellow lecturers who populated his world. These are not just jokes about missed connections and unresponsive audiences. They are a window into a vanished America where Ideas traveled by train and a good lecture could change a town's entire evening. For readers who crave the gentle humor of a more civilized age, these pages offer quiet delight.