is
illness and that he had been compelled to disappoint his audience a few
days before, and then he stood helpless! In sheer desperation he looked
at Mrs. Bok sitting in the stage box, who, divining her husband's
plight, motioned to the inside pocket of his coat. He put his hand there
and pulled out a copy of his lecture which she had placed there! The
whole tragic comedy had happened so quickly that the audience was
absolutely unaware of what had occurred, and Bok went on and practically
read his lecture. But it was not a successful evening for his audience
or for himself, and the one was doubtless as glad when it was over as
the other.

When he reached home, he was convinced that he had had enough of
lecturing! He had to make a second short tour, however, for which he had
contracted with another manager before embarking on the first. This tour
took him to Indianapolis, and after the lecture, James Whitcomb Riley
gave him a supper. There were some thirty men in the party; the affair
was an exceedingly happy one; the happiest that Bok had attended. He
said this to Riley on the way to the hotel.

"Usually," said Bok, "men, for some reason or other, hold aloof from me
on these lecture tours. They stand at a distance and eye me, and I see
wonder on their faces rather than a desire to mix."

"You've noticed that, then?" smilingly asked the poet.

"Yes, and I can't quite get it. At home, my friends are men. Why should
it be different in other cities?"

"I'll tell you," said Riley. "Five or six of the men you met to-night
were loath to come. When I pinned them down to their reason, it was I
thought: they regard you as an effeminate being, a sissy."

"Good heavens!" interrupted Bok.

"Fact," said Riley, "and you can't wonder at it nor blame them. You have
been most industriously paragraphed, in countless jests, about your
penchant for pink teas, your expert knowledge of tatting, crocheting,
and all that sort of stuff. Look what Eugene Field has done in that
direction. These paragraphs have, doubtless, been good advertising for
your magazine, and, in a way, for you. But, on the other hand, they have
given a false impression of you. Men have taken these paragraphs
seriously and they think of you as the man pictured in them. It's a
fact; I know. It's all right after they meet you and get your measure.
The joke then is on them. Four of the men I fairly dragged to the dinner
this evening said this to me just before I left.