"I remember one occasion in particular when we had a remarkably large hall, crowded to the walls. The entrance was at the further end of the hall, opposite the platform. Mr. Nye, as usual, opened the evening, very fearful of his ability to reach the whole throng. He had barely got started when the doors opened and a great fellow about six feet and two inches tall entered with two ladies and immediately fell into an altercation with an usher about his seats. Nye paused and the altercation could be heard all over the house, with this fellow arraigning the usher in a very loud voice. Finally it died down a bit and Nye resumed, but he was interrupted by the man, who held up his hand and cried, 'Hold on, there, I have paid for seats for this lecture and propose to hear all of it.' "Nye replied with great composure: 'In view of the great size of the hall,' said he, 'I was about to congratulate the audience upon the foresight of the managers in securing a speaker for each end.' "The house howled with delight and the applause beat back upon the obstreperous interrupter with such force that it drove him from the hall. After this episode Nye was always a great favorite in that city and was recalled there many times. "Mr. Nye was a fatalist--not a complaining one, but a fatalist no less, and with considerable occasion. He was pursued by a spirit of the perverse. Unexpected, trying things were always happening that seemed especially in line to test his patience. Indeed, I was sometimes jealous of him, for these things seemed to occur with greater force and persistence to him than to me. [Illustration: A CLOSE SHAVE.] "I had frequently remarked upon the persistent recurrence of the number thirteen with me during one of our trips in the South, but this was one superstition at which Nye scoffed. He told me that at the next hotel we struck if I objected to being 'incarcerated' in No. 13 he would risk it once. And not long after I found myself registered for that fatal number; whereupon I promptly informed Mr. Nye that I should hold him to his promise. I remember I had a handful of mail I was very anxious to see, but I would not open it until I had got another room. Nye declared he wanted to first size up the room he had been assigned to, and went on down the hall with the landlord. He soon returned with the remark that he could not lose much and walked into the thirteen room and set his grip down, returning to where I waited in the hall outside. He had not more than got out of the door when the heavy transom fell with a crash. He was convinced that that transom had been waiting for him for years. "Mr. Nye was an invalid, but again, as it would seem, it was the perversity of fate that made the public unwilling to believe that a humorist could ever be ill or have any reasonable excuse for breaking an engagement. He never got the benefit of the excuses made for others when they failed to appear or to write according to expectation.