Thackeray's Procrastinaion.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 180, 27 November 1886, Page 7

Thackeray's Procrastinaion.

Thackekay's greatest fault as a lecturer was an irresistible inclination to keep bis audience in waiting. This was strongly displayed upon his first public appearance in this country. The advertisements of his lecture contained the announcement that it would begin at 7.30 o'clock, and when he read the line in the newspapers he very tjoolly said he would endeavour'to be ready by 8 o'clock, but that he thought it extremely doubtful. | His friends were horrified at this declaration and earnestly pleaded with him not to annoy his first American audience by keeping them waiting, picturing to him all manner of probable «vil consequences. When called upon at 7.15 o'clock to be escorted to the Melodeon in Boston, from whose stage he was to talk, he was found not only unshaved and undressed, but absorbingly engaged in making for a lady a charmingly executed pen-and-ink drawing intended to illustrate a passage in Goethe's "Sorrows of Werther," and he earnestly protested that he would not move one step toward " the Melodeon " until he had completed his task.. But he finished it quickly, and his audience found themaelves so entranced with bis charm of pereon and of manners and of delivery that they forgave the lecturer his long delay. It vru at the conclusion of his public talk up-

on this evening that a shabby-looking and ehabbily-dreeeed man stepped up to "him in the anteroom of the hall, and grasping him vigorously by the hand introduced himßelf as the " proprietor of the mammoth rat," and suggested an interchange of season tickets for the two great shows, the other being William Makepeace Thackeray. Without a change of countenance the novelist made the proposed exchange, and promised that he would pay the "mammoth a rat " vtoit.