intelligence ever gleams on their faces; no response comes from their
eyes.

I find, for example, that wherever I go there is always seated in the
audience, about three seats from the front, a silent man with a big
motionless face like a melon. He is always there. I have seen that
man in every town or city from Richmond, Indiana, to Bournemouth in
Hampshire. He haunts me. I get to expect him. I feel like nodding to
him from the platform. And I find that all other lecturers have the
same experience. Wherever they go the man with the big face is always
there. He never laughs; no matter if the people all round him are
convulsed with laughter, he sits there like a rock--or, no, like a
toad--immovable. What he thinks I don't know. Why he comes to
lectures I cannot guess. Once, and once only, I spoke to him, or,
rather, he spoke to me. I was coming out from the lecture and found
myself close to him in the corridor. It had been a rather gloomy
evening; the audience had hardly laughed at all; and I know nothing
sadder than a humorous lecture without laughter. The man with the big
face, finding himself beside me, turned and said, "Some of them
people weren't getting that to-night." His tone of sympathy seemed to
imply that he had got it all himself; if so, he must have swallowed
it whole without a sign. But I have since thought that this man with
the big face may have his own internal form of appreciation. This
much, however, I know: to look at him from the platform is fatal. One
sustained look into his big, motionless face and the lecturer would
be lost; inspiration would die upon one's lips--the basilisk isn't in
it with him.

Personally, I no sooner see the man with the big face than
instinctively I turn my eyes away. I look round the hall for another