Home | Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search
Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, held what might be called an informal
reception for newspapermen on Sunday morning. There were four of them present
and they spent a very enjoyable half hour. It was not in the nature of an interview,
it was more of a friendly chat. Mark told the boys about some of his own early
experiences and they in turn regaled him with some of the odd criticisms of
his entertainment that had been made by Vancouverites. This led up to a talk
about the peculiarities of audiences, in reference to which the genial writer
and entertainer gave some incidents in his career as a lecturer. He said that
one of the hardest things to overcome was the feeling of compassion that sometimes
pervades a small audience. And with audiences a subtle something seems to convey
the feeling from one to another. The small audience surrounded by empty seats
feels sorry for the poor man on the platform and when they are in that sate
of mind it is hard to get them interested. If at this stage the man on the platform
gets rattled the feeling of compassion will turn to one akin to contempt, and
then the lecture or entertainment is killed. The first thing for a man to do
in a case of that kind is to make those present feel he is complimented by their
presence and that he is sorry for those who have stayed away. He should also
let them see that he has no worry over the box office returns; that he has a
manager to do the worrying in that department. Once he lectured in a hall in
St. Louis that would seat 1,500 people. He had an audience of 22. It was a level
floored hall and as far as the eye could reach there was row after row of bare
bench backs. He got the 22 people to all come up to the front seat and they
just filled it nicely. It was like talking to a few disciples on the edge of
the desert of Sahara but they had a good time and though he was only timed for
an hour and a half he talked to them for two hours. At this juncture Major Pond
came in with what Mark calls his cartridge box and took a picture of the group
which the reporters all want a copy of as a memento. And speaking of Major Pond
it seems a pity that he should be allowed to leave the city without giving his
own lecture for the illustration of which he has hundreds of lantern slides.
It is called: Twenty Years as a Dealer in Other People's Brains. The lecture
relates to all the famous lecturers and entertainers that Major Pond had managed.
