John Kendrick Bangs, Salubrities I have met

              Salubrities I have met
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John Kendrick Bangs
JOHN   KENDRICK   BANGS
ONE of the busiest and most prolific pens of the last quarter-century has been that of John  Kendrick  Bangs, the inventor of The Genial Idiot and the discoverer of A House-Boat on the Styx.    The author of nearly fifty
volumes of humorous prose and verse has found time even in a period of such
productivity to devote a deal of energy to other things than writing, and has been in turn Managing Editor of Life, Editor of the Departments of Humor for Messrs. Harper & Brothers, Editor of Literature, Editor of Harper's Weekly and of the Metropolitan Magazine.     In 1894 Mr. Bangs was the Democratic candidate for Mayor of Yonkers, and, as he felicitously puts it, was by the grace of the electorate returned by a comfortable majority "to the bosom of his family, unwept, unhonored and unstung."     In the Presidential campaign of 1908, he was one of the most popular speakers on the stump in New England, his experience as a platform speaker in the harness for over ten years standing him in good stead in getting close to his hearers. His platform manner is intensely sympathetic and partakes more of the nature of a pleas¬ant chat with friends than of that whirlwind oratory which affects the rafters of a hall rather more strongly than the hearts of the listeners.
Mr. Bangs most notable platform effort, "Salubrities I Have Met," is a lively running talk about the more or less famous men and women he has known in the course of his ca¬reer. It includes gossipy anecdotes of statesmen, poets, novelists, philanthropists and others, and closes with an exquisite presentation of the character of one of the greatest of Salubrities in a story entitled "A Strenuous Day at Oyster Bay," of which a critic has said: "It is a gem of kindly humor, than which nothing more continuously funny has been pro¬duced in American literature."
Writing in Success Magazine, some years ago, Robert Makay said:
"Sometimes I wish it could be possible for every man and woman to have a little talk with John Kendrick Bangs. It would do them good. There is too little stress laid on the necessity of humor as a factor of everyday life. Mr. Bangs recognizes this important phase of immortality, and he is trying his best to get others to recognize it too. The home often loses some of its brightest hours because there is nothing in it to supply genuine laughter. Cares take the place of smiles, petty worries drive sentiment a-begging and troubles are allowed to stand in bold array where pleasure longs to be king; and all because there are human beings who fail to comprehend the value of a smile. If one would read carefully the books by Mr. Bangs, he would see that the man born with an uncontrollable temper and the man with his 'corrugator supercilii' in a petrified condition are to be pitied more than the ants. The one will live to be dominated by a power that will make his life more miserable than the lives of those on whom it is inflicted; the other will die without knowing the real source of life and its twin attributes — love and contentment."
Mr. Bangs was born in Yonkers, N. Y., May 27, 1862, and was graduated from Col¬umbia College in 1883. He is the son of Francis N. Bangs, eminent at the American Bar and President of the New York Bar Association, and the grandson of Dr. Nathan Bangs, one time President of Wesleyan College at Middletown, Connecticut. The Bangs family are thoroughly American, having first come to these shores in 1621, landing at Plymouth, Mass., and becoming in all generations more or less influential members of the communities in which they have lived. John Kendrick Bangs now resides at Ogunquit, on the coast of Maine, where with the sea and piney hills for his neighbors he does his literary work and for eight months of the year lays up the stores of physical strength needed to carry him through the strenuous effort of the lecture platform. His season just closed has been one of the most successful in a period of ten years, in which time Mr. Bangs has ad¬dressed nearly five hundred audiences in forty States of the Union.
ALUBRITIES  I   HAVE  MET
A Lecture of Cheer. Personal Recollections of More or Less Distinguished People.     Winston  Spencer   Churchill — Richard   Harding   Davis — George  Ade
— Henry   M.   Stanley — Mrs.   Stanley — Richard   Henry   Stoddard — A.   Conan   Doyle —
Carnegie — Rockefeller — Mark Twain and  Others.
PRESS COMMENTS
A rare pleasure. — Chelsea Record.
Good healthy fun, rich in cleverness, fairly scintillating with wit, the lecture was greeted with constant laughter.— Jersey City Journal.
Throughout the lecture there were many things to laugh at, but at the same time perhaps the unexpected impression gained by many who went to hear the illustrious humorist was that of a man who is not merely witty but has a deep sense of appreciation of the finer things of life, sympathy with his fellow-men and that spirit which leads one to laugh with a man and not at him.— Bangor Commercial.
The lecturer closed by reading a delightfully funny account of a Strenuous Day with Roosevelt, and then everybody looked at his neighbor and wondered where the evening had gone to. The magic of the true entertainer had made us oblivious of time.— Lewiston Sun.
It left a good taste in our mouths and made us feel the appropriateness and the need for larger sympathies, kindlier spirits and more genial dispositions.— Daily Record, Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Good wholesome humor with sense characterized the lecture, and the entire audience was kept in roars of laughter from his reference to his introduction to the close of a Strenuous Day at Oyster Bay.
— Daily News, Greenville, South Carolina.
John  Kendrick Bangs' lecture on Salubrities was as genial and kindly as one of Dickens' happiest stories.
— Journal, Atlanta, Georgia.
Stating his conception of the spirit of humor as being to "laugh with everybody but at nobody," he re¬mained true to it throughout, and, when he had finished, his hearers not only felt that they had forgotten care while partaking of the joy and sweetness which bubbled from the man's heart, but that they had stowed in their own hearts sunshine that would light other days and drive away cares to come.
— The Mississippian, University, Mississippi.

MORE  SALUBRITIES
A Second Installment of "Salubrities I Have Met." New This Season and Available for  Return  Dates.
Salubrities and Salobrities — Some Eminent Statesmen — President Taft — Theodore Roose¬velt — Mr. La Follette — Chauncey M. Depew — A Backhanded Compliment to Conan Doyle — Rudyard  Kipling — Labouchere — Hall  Caine — More  Mark Twain.

AN   EVENING  OF  CHRISTMAS  STORIES
Readings from Mr. Bangs' "Little Book of Christmas."
An Entirely New Evening of Readings.     Humor and  Pathos Combined.
I.    The Conversion of Hetherington. II.    The Child Who  Had Everything But-Ill.    Santa Claus and  Little Billee. IV.    The  House of the Seven Santas.
(Subjects continued over page)

EADINGS   FROM   HIS  OWN  BOOKS
SPECIMEN PROGRAMME
I.    The Genial  Idiot:     He Essays Poetry.
II.    A House-Boat on the Styx:    As to Discosaurians and Others.
III.     A Glance Ahead:    A Tale of Christmas 3565 A.D.
IV.     A Strenuous  Day at Oyster Bay.
There is something in getting at the personality of an author, in seeing him in the flesh, that gives his writings a new meaning. A certain sense of nearness and personal interest surrounds anything of his one may chance to read. In no case has this been more notable than with John Kendrick Bangs. He ap¬peared before us with all his cultured impudence, and we hardly knew how to take him at first, but it soon dawned upon us that we were listening to a species of humor as deliciously audacious as it was refined and clever. Mr. Bangs is a past-master of artistic incongruity, and the effective way in which he masses di¬verse elements to produce his effects reveals the hand of a genuine artist. We have found his breezy humor nowhere more refreshing than when he appears before us in his own proper person and gives us a good-natured friendly laugh by his inspired nonsense.—The Amulet, Westchester, Pennsylvania.
Aside from the great merit in Mr. Bangs' stories, his extremely charming personality did much toward making the evening a pleasant one. He seemed to touch a sympathetic chord in all who heard him, and kept in perfect touch with his audience. It is safe to say that as an entertainer Mr. Bangs cannot be surpassed.— The Targum, Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

RECENT BOOKS BY MR. BANGS
SONGS OF CHEER
A Volume of Verse, in which the Author Sounds a Much Needed Note of Optimism, concerning which William De Morgan has said that it "is Elizabethan in Manner and Blakey in Spirit." By Mail, Postpaid, $1.06, from the Publishers, Sherman,  French & Company,  6  Beacon  Street,  Boston,  Mass.
ECHOES OF CHEER
Mr. Bangs Second Book of Optimistic Verses. Uniform with Songs of Cheer. Just Ready. By Mail, Postpaid, $1.08, from the Publishers, Sherman, French & Company, 6  Beacon Street,  Boston,  Massachusetts.
A LITTLE BOOK OF CHRISTMAS
Tales and Verses Full of the Real Old Fashioned Christmas Spirit. Humor and Appealing Pathos Combined. Illustrated. By Mail, Postpaid, $1.10, from the  Publishers,  Little,  Brown & Company, 34  Beacon Street,  Boston,  Mass.
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