ers from relatives and also from former friends.
Nothing is more certain than when a man has lived on terms of perfect
equality and familiarity with a certain set of men, he can never hope to
be anything but "plain John" to them, though by his personal efforts he
may have obtained the applause of the public. Did he not rub shoulders
with them for years in the same walk of life? Why these bravos? What was
there in him more than in them? Even though they may have gone so far as
to single him out as a "rather clever fellow," while he was one of
theirs, still the surprise at the public appreciation is none the less
keen, his advance toward the front an unforgivable offense, and they are
immediately seized with a desire to rush out in the highways and
proclaim that he is only "Jack," and not the "John" that his admirers
think him. I remember that, in the early years of my life in England,
when I had not the faintest idea of ever writing a book on John Bull, a
young English friend of mine did me the honor of appreciating highly all
my observations on British life and manners, and for years urged me hard
and often to jot them down to make a book of. One day the book was
finished and appeared in print. It attracted a good deal of public
attention, but no one was more surprised than this man, who, from a kind
friend, was promptly transformed into the most severe and unfriendly of
my critics, and went about saying that the book and the amount of public
attention bestowed upon it were both equally ridiculous. He has never
spoken to me since.

[Illustration: THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.]

A successful man is very often charged with wishing to turn his back on
his former friends. No accusation is more false. Nothing would please
him more than to retain the friends of more modest times, but it is they
who have changed their feelings. They snub him, and this man, who is in
constant need of moral support and _pick-me-up_, cannot stand it.

* * * * *

But let us return to the audience.

The man who won't smile is not the only person who causes you some
annoyance.

There is the one who laughs too soon; who laughs before you have made
your points, and who thinks, because you have opened your lecture with a
joke, that everything you say afterward is a joke. There is another
rather objectionable person; it is the one who explains your points to
his neighbor, and makes them laugh aloud just at the moment when you