I recollect, though, once at Bradford, where I was lecturing, the audience were put out for want of it, for the operators supplied by the association I was lecturing to were utterly incompetent. The gas was bad, to begin with--it became small by degrees and beautifully less, and suddenly went out altogether! So did the operators. They simply bolted out of the hall, and left the lantern to manage itself.
Du Maurier made a delightful drawing for _Punch_ of a sandwich advertising contractor dismissing a man with a board on which was the letter H. "Now, look 'ere, you H! The public don't want yer, nor _I_ don't, nor nobody don't--so 'ook it!" Or something to that effect.
I wish lecturers could dismiss chairmen in the same peremptory fashion, for I am sure the public don't want him, nor _I_ don't, nor nobody. Their boredom had better be dropped like the poor letter H--which, by the way, some chairmen drop pretty frequently.
I'll classify the chairmen as follows:--The Absent Chairman, the Ideal Chairman, the Political Chairman, and the Ignorant Chairman.
_The Absent Chairman._--I must divide the Absent Chairman into two heads. Two heads are better than one, but if both are absent--the one in body and the other in mind--it is evident no head is better than two. The absent in body does not turn up at the lecture--forgets all about it, or remembers too well what he suffered before. The lecturer and his audience are kept waiting. The absent in mind does turn up, though--turns up anything but trumps. He--"ah!--feels--ah!--the honour--ah!--of presiding this evening." He "has the honour--ah!--of introducing the lecturer, a lady--ah!--a gentleman, I should say, whose name is a household word. Who does not know the name of--ah (feels in all his pockets for syllabus)--of--ah--this gentleman who is about to delight us all this evening on a--yes, yes,"--takes from his pocket a piece of paper from which he reads: "The Rev. Carbon Chalker, M.A., on Microbes found in the Middle Strata of Undiscovered Coal." "This rev. gentleman no doubt----" he proceeds, when he is quickly interrupted by the secretary, who jumps up and says, "Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, that is last year's syllabus you have in your hand."