An instance of his procrastination occurred the evening
of his first public appearance in America. His lecture was advertised to
take place at half past seven, and when he was informed of the hour, he
said he would try and be ready at eight o'clock, but thought it very
doubtful. Horrified at this assertion, I tried to impress upon him the
importance of punctuality on this, the night of his first bow to an
American audience. At a quarter past seven I called for him, and found
him not only unshaved and undressed for the evening, but rapturously
absorbed in making a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a passage in
Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, for a lady, which illustration,--a charming
one, by the way, for he was greatly skilled in drawing,--he vowed he
would finish before he would budge an inch in the direction of the (I
omit the adjective) Melodeon. A comical incident occurred just as he was
about leaving the hall, after his first lecture in Boston. A shabby,
ungainly looking man stepped briskly up to him in the anteroom, seized
his hand and announced himself as "proprietor of the Mammoth Rat," and
proposed to exchange season tickets. Thackeray, with the utmost gravity,
exchanged cards and promised to call on the wonderful quadruped next
day.
Thackeray's motto was 'Avoid performing to-day, if possible, what can be
postponed till to-morrow.
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