There is a feeble ripple of applause; he
makes his miserable bow and explains with as much enthusiasm as he
can who he is. The atmosphere of the thing is so cold that an 'Arctic
expedition isn't in it with it. I found also the further difficulty
that in the absence of the chairman very often the audience, or a
large part of it, doesn't know who the lecturer is. On many occasions
I received on appearing a wild burst of applause under the impression
that I was somebody else. I have been mistaken in this way for Mr.
Briand, then Prime Minister of France, for Charlie Chaplin, for Mrs.
Asquith,--but stop, I may get into a libel suit. All I mean is that
without a chairman "we celebrities" get terribly mixed up together.
To one experience of my tour as a lecturer I shall always be able to
look back with satisfaction. I nearly had the pleasure of killing a
man with laughing: and this in the most literal sense. American
lecturers have often dreamed of doing this. I nearly did it. The man
in question was a comfortable apoplectic-looking man with the kind of
merry rubicund face that is seen in countries where they don't have
prohibition. He was seated near the back of the hall and was laughing
uproariously. All of a sudden I realised that something was
happening. The man had collapsed sideways on to the floor; a little
group of men gathered about him; they lifted him up and I could see
them carrying him out, a silent and inert mass.
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