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“Late! Are you the man that’s running this lecture course?”

“Well, sir, I have the management of it.”

“You have, have you? Then permit me to tell you right here, my friend, that you ought to sublet the contract to a five-year-old boy. You let me get out in the cold–send no conveyance as you agreed–“

“We sent our wagon, sir, to the station. You could have gone in and warmed yourself, and if it had not arrived you could have telephoned–the station is always warm.”

“You have the impudence to tell me that I don’t know whether a station is closed or not, and that I can’t see a wagon when it is hauled up alongside a depot?”

The clammy hands went up in protest: “If you will listen, sir, I will–“

“No, sir, I will listen to nothing.” and I forged ahead into a small room where five or six belated people were hanging up their coats and hats.

But the Immaculate still persisted:

“This is not where–Will you come into the dressing-room, sir? We have a nice warm room for the lecturers on the other side of the–“

“No–sir; I won’t go another step, except on to that platform, and I’m not very anxious now to get there–not until I put something inside of me–” (here I unstrapped my bag) “to save me from an attack of pneumonia.” (I had my flask out now and the cup filled to the brim.) “When I think of how hard I worked to get here and how little you–” (and down it went at one gulp).

The expression of disgust that wrinkled the placid face of the Immaculate as the half-empty flask went back to its place, was pathetic–but I wouldn’t have given him a drop to have saved his life.

I turned on him again.

“Do you think it would be possible to get a vehicle of any kind to take me where I am to sleep?”

“I think so, sir.” His self-control was admirable.

“Well, will you please do it?”

“A sleigh has already been ordered, sir.” This came through tightly closed lips.

“All right. Now down which aisle is the entrance to the platform?”

“This way, sir.” The highest glacier on Mont Blanc couldn’t have been colder or more impassive.

Just here a calming thought wedged itself into my brain-storm. These patient, long-suffering people were not to blame; many of them had come several miles through the storm to hear me speak and were entitled to the best that was in me. To vent upon them my spent steam because–No, that was impossible.

“Hold on, my friend,” I said, “stop where you are, let me pull myself together. This isn’t their fault–” We were passing behind the screen hiding the little stage.

But he didn’t hold on; he marched straight ahead; so did I, past the pitcher of ice water and the two last winter’s palms, where he motioned me to a chair.

His introduction was not long, nor was it discursive. There was nothing eulogistic of my various acquirements, occupations, talents; no remark about the optimistic trend of my literature, the affection in which my characters were held; nothing of this at all. Nor did I expect it. What interested me more was the man himself.

The steam of my wrath had blurred his outline and make-up before; now I got a closer, although a side, view of his person. He was a short man, much thicker at the middle than he was at either end–a defect all the more apparent by reason of a long-tailed, high-waisted, unbuttonable black coat which, while it covered his back and sides, would have left his front exposed, but for his snowy white waistcoat, which burst like a ball of cotton from its pod.

His only gesture was the putting together of his ten fingers, opening and touching them again to accentuate his sentences. What passed through my mind as I sat and watched him, was not the audience, nor what I was going to say to them, but the Christianlike self-control of this gentleman–a control which seemed to carry with it a studied reproof. Under its influence I unconsciously closed both furnace doors and opened my forced draft. Even then I should have reached for the safety-valve, but for an oily, martyr-like smile which flickered across his face, accompanied by a deprecating movement of his elbows, both indicating his patience under prolonged suffering, and his instant readiness to turn the other cheek if further smiting on my part was in store for him. I strode to the edge of the platform: “I know, good people,” I exploded, “that you are not responsible for what has happened, but I want to tell you before I begin, that I have been boiling mad for ten minutes and am still at white heat, and that it is going to take me some time to get cool enough to be of the slightest service to you. You notice that I appear before you without a proper suit of clothes–a mark of respect which every lecturer should pay his audience. You are also aware that I am nearly an hour late. What I regret is, first, the cause of my frame of mind, second, that you should have been kept waiting. Now, let me tell you exactly what I have gone through, and I do it simply because this is not the first time that this has happened to your lecturers, and it ought to be your last. It certainly will be the last for me.” Then followed the whole incident, including the Immaculate’s protest about my being late, my explosion, etc., etc., even to the incident of my flask.