inviolable engagements, some hundred to a season and from Boston
to San Francisco, were a distress to my soul. I am glad that's
over with. Imagine yourself on a crowded day-long excursion;
imagine that you had to ride all the way on the platform of the
car; then imagine that you had to ride all the way back on the
same platform; and lastly, try to imagine how you would feel if
you did that every day of your life, and you will then get a
glimmer--a faint glimmer--of how one feels after traveling about
on a reading or lecturing tour.

"All this time I had been writing whenever there was any strength
left in me. I could not resist the inclination to write. It was
what I most enjoyed doing. And so I wrote, laboriously ever,
more often using the rubber end of the pencil than the point.

"In my readings I had an opportunity to study and find out for
myself what the public wants, and afterward I would endeavor to
use the knowledge gained in my writing. The public desires
nothing but what is absolutely natural, and so perfectly natural
as to be fairly artless. It can not tolerate affectation, and it
takes little interest in the classical production. It demands
simple sentiments that come direct from the heart. While on the
lecture platform I watched the effect that my readings had on the
audience very closely and whenever anybody left the hall I knew
that my recitation was at fault and tried to find out why. Once
a man and his wife made an exit while I was giving The Happy
Little Cripple--a recitation I had prepared with particular
enthusiasm and satisfaction. It fulfilled, as few poems do, all
the requirements of length, climax and those many necessary
features for a recitation. The subject was a theme of real