FOOTNOTES:[C]"For if one has anything worth writing, it is really worth while to write it so it can be read."—Address at Barre.[D]In another scrap of his reminiscences, he says: "The oldest political event of which I have any recollection is that of thequasiFrench War of 1798. This I remember only in connection with the family talk of the price of flour, which it was said would cost twenty dollars a barrel. As we used principally brown bread, this was of less consequence; although the price of Indian corn and meal was probably increased also."[E]Mr. Hedge, with whom this was a favorite passage.
[C]"For if one has anything worth writing, it is really worth while to write it so it can be read."—Address at Barre.
[C]"For if one has anything worth writing, it is really worth while to write it so it can be read."—Address at Barre.
[D]In another scrap of his reminiscences, he says: "The oldest political event of which I have any recollection is that of thequasiFrench War of 1798. This I remember only in connection with the family talk of the price of flour, which it was said would cost twenty dollars a barrel. As we used principally brown bread, this was of less consequence; although the price of Indian corn and meal was probably increased also."
[D]In another scrap of his reminiscences, he says: "The oldest political event of which I have any recollection is that of thequasiFrench War of 1798. This I remember only in connection with the family talk of the price of flour, which it was said would cost twenty dollars a barrel. As we used principally brown bread, this was of less consequence; although the price of Indian corn and meal was probably increased also."
[E]Mr. Hedge, with whom this was a favorite passage.
[E]Mr. Hedge, with whom this was a favorite passage.
Written without method, dotted down carelessly andcurrente calamoon the leaves of my pocket-book, the notes I now publish were never intended to be read by any one but myself. A wanderer for many long years, I have contracted the habit of making daily memoranda of the fleeting, evanescent impressions of my travels, and thus giving them a more tangible form. These notes, drawn up hastily and for myself alone, have no literary merit whatever, but they most unequivocally tell the truth. Is this an adequate compensation for the numerous negligences of style which criticism may discover in them? You answer my question affirmatively, my dear M——. Be that as it may, these reminiscences of travel have often solaced the ennui and fatigue of my erratic life. In writing of the present, the bitterness of the past vanished; and again, if the present were tedious or fraught with care, I reverted to the sunny pages of the time that is no more, and revived the sweet emotions of the long-forgotten past.
Under your patronage I now place these poor leaves. They have been the partners of my joys and my griefs, of my toils and my leisure, during the last three years that have whirled me relentlessly in that most monotonous, yet agitated circle, yclept "a life of concerts." Should you find evidence too flagrant, even for your prepossessed eyes, of the inexperience of my pen, bear in mind, I pray you, that I am but a musician, and only a pianist at that.
January, 1862.Once more in New York, after an absence of six years!—Six years madly squandered, scattered to the winds, as if life were infinite, and youth—eternal! Six years, in the space of which I have wandered at random beneath the blue skies of the tropics, yielding myself up indolently to the caprice of Fortune, giving a concert wherever I happened to find a piano, sleeping wherever night overtook me, on the green grass of the savanna, or under the palm-leafed roof of aveguero, who shared with me his corn-tortilla, coffee, and bananas, and thought himself amply renumerated, when, at dawn, I took my departure with a "Dios se lo pague á V." (May God reward you!) to which he responded by a "Vaya V. con Dios!" (God be with you!)—these two formulæ constituting, in such unsophisticated countries, the entire operation, so ingeniously perfected by civilized nations, which generally is known by the name of "settling the hotel-bill." And when at last I became weary of the same horizon, I crossed an arm of the sea, and landed on some neighboring isle, or on the Spanish Main. Thus, in succession, I have visited all the Antilles,—Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish; the Guianas, and the coasts of Para. At times, having become the idol of some obscurepueblo, whose untutored ears I had charmed with its own simple ballads, I would pitch my tent for five, six, eight months, deferring my departure from day to day, until finally I began seriously to entertain the idea of remaining there forevermore. Abandoning myself to such influences, I lived without care, as the bird sings, as the flower expands, as the brook flows, oblivious of the past, reckless of the future, and sowed both my heart and my purse with the ardor of a husbandman who hopes to reap a hundred ears for every grain he confides to the earth. But, alas! the fields, where is garnered the harvest of expended doubloons, and where vernal loves bloom anew, are yet to be discovered; and the result of my double prodigality was, that one fine morning I found myself a bankrupt in heart, with my purse at ebb-tide.
Suddenly disgusted with the world and with myself, weary, discouraged, mistrusting men, (ay, and women, too,) I fled to a desert on the extinct volcano of M——, where, for several months, I lived the life of a cenobite, with no companion but a poor lunatic, whom I had met on a small island, and who had attached himself to me. He followed me everywhere, and loved me with that absurd and touching constancy of which dogs and madmen alone are capable. My friend, whose insanity was of a mild and harmless character, fancied himself the greatest genius in the world. He was, moreover, under the impression that he suffered from a gigantic, monstrous tooth. Of the two idiosyncrasies, the latter alone made his lunacy discernible,—too many individuals being affected with the other symptom to render it an anomalous feature of the human mind. My friend was in the habit of protesting that this enormous tooth increased periodically and threatened to encroach upon his entire jaw. Tormented, at the same time, with the desire of regenerating humanity, he divided his leisure between the study of dentistry, to which he applied himself in order to impede the progress of his hypothetical tyrant, and a voluminous correspondence which he kept up with the Pope, his brother, and the Emperor of the French, his cousin. In the latter occupation he pleaded the interests of humanity, styled himself "the prince of thought," and exalted me to the dignity of his illustrious friend and benefactor. In the midst of the wreck of his intellect, one thing still survived,—his love of music. He played the violin, and, strange as it may appear, although insane, he could not understand the so-calledmusic of the future.
My hut, perched on the verge of the crater, at the very summit of the mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock upon which it was built projected over a precipice, whose abysses were concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The species of table-rock thus formed had been encircled with a railing and transformed into a terrace, on a level with the sleeping-room, by my predecessor in this hermitage. His last wish had been to be buried there; and from my bed I could see his white tombstone gleaming in the moonlight, a few steps from my window. Every evening I rolled my piano out upon the terrace, and there, facing the most incomparably beautiful landscape, all bathed in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I poured forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts with which that scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself a gigantic amphitheatre hewn out of the mountains by an army of Titans: right and left, immense virgin forests, full of those subdued and distant harmonies which are, as it were, the voices of Silence; before me, a prospect of twenty leagues, marvellously enhanced by the extreme transparency of the air; above, the azure of the sky; beneath, the creviced sides of the mountain sweeping down to the plain; afar, the waving savannas; beyond them, a grayish speck (the distant city); and encompassing them all, the immensity of the ocean, closing the horizon with its deep blue line. Behind me was a rock on which a torrent of melted snow dashes its white foam, and there, diverted from its course, rushes with a mad leap and plunges headlong into the gulf that yawns beneath my window.
Amid such scenes I composed "Réponds-moi la Marche des Gibaros," "Polonia," "Columbia," "Pastorella e Cavaliere," "Jeunesse," and many other unpublished works. I allowed my fingers to run over the keys, wrapped up in the contemplation of these wonders, while my poor friend, whom I heeded but little, revealed to me, with a childish loquacity, the lofty destiny he held in reserve for humanity. Can you conceive the contrast produced by this shattered intellect, expressing at random its disjointed thoughts, as a disordered clock strikes by chance any hour, and the majestic serenity of the scene around me? I felt it instinctively. My misanthropy gave way; I became indulgent towardsmyself and mankind, and the wounds of my heart closed once more. My despair was soothed, and soon the sun of the tropics, which tinges all things with gold, dreams as well as fruits, restored me with new confidence and vigor to my wanderings.
I relapsed into the life and manners of these primitive countries; if not strictly virtuous, they are, at all events, terribly attractive. Existence in a tropical wilderness, in the midst of a voluptuous and half-civilized race, bears no resemblance to that of a London cockney, a Parisian lounger, or an American Quaker. Times there were, indeed, when a voice was heard within me that spoke of nobler aims. It reminded me of what I once was, of what I yet might be, and commanded imperatively a return to a healthier and more active life. But I had allowed myself to be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidiousfar niente, and my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before a polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. "Where was the object?" I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas, listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the guava-trees, at nightfall to the chirp of thegrillosin the cane-fields, or else smoking my cigar, taking my coffee, rocking myself in a hammock,—in short, enjoying all the delights that are the very heart-blood of aguajiro, and out of the sphere of which he can see but death, or, what is worse to him, the feverish agitation of our Northern society. Go and talk of the funds, of the landed interest, of stock-jobbing to this Sybarite, lord of the wilderness, who can live all the year round on luscious bananas and delicious cocoa-nuts, which he is not even at the trouble of planting,—who has the best tobacco in the world to smoke,—who replaces to-day the horse he had yesterday by a better one chosen from the firstcaballadahe meets,—who requires no further protection from the cold, than a pair of linen trousers, in that favored clime where the seasons roll on in one perennial summer,—who, more than all this, finds at eve, under the rustling palm-trees, pensive beauties eager to reward with their smiles the one who murmurs in their ears those three words, ever new, ever beautiful, "Yo te quiero."
Moralists, I am aware, condemn this life of inaction and mere pleasure; and they are right. But poetry is often in antagonism with virtuous purposes; and now that I am shivering under the icy wind and dull sky of the North,—that I must needs listen to discussions on Erie, Prairie du Chien, Harlem, and Cumberland,—that I read in the papers the lists of the killed and wounded,—that havoc and conflagration, violence and murder, are perpetrated all around me,—I find myself excusing the half-civilized inhabitant of the savanna, who prefers his poetical barbarism to our barbarous progress.
Unexpectedly brought back to the stern realities of life by a great affliction, I wished to destroy every link that connected me with the six years I had thrown away. It was at this period that Strakosch wrote to me, offering an engagement for a tour of concerts through the United States. I hesitated an instant; one sad look was cast upon the vanished days, I breathed a regret, and—signed. The dream was over; I was saved; but who could say, if, in the rescue, youth and poetry had not perished? Poetry and youth are of a volatile mood,—they are butterflies. Shut them up in a cage, and they will dash their delicate wings to pieces against its bars. Endeavor to direct them as they soar, and you cramp their flight, you deprive them of their audacity,—two qualities which are often to be met with in inexperience, and the loss of which—am I wrong in saying so?—is not always compensated by maturity of talent.
It was that Christmas-day that did it; I'm quite convinced of that; and the way it was is what I am going to tell you.
You see, among the various family customs of us Crowfields, the observance of all sorts offêtesand festivals has always been a matter of prime regard; and among all the festivals of the round ripe year, none is so joyous and honored among us as Christmas.
Let no one upon this, prick up the ears of Archaeology, and tell us that by the latest calculations of chronologists our ivy-grown and holly-mantled Christmas is all a hum,—that it has been demonstrated, by all sorts of signs and tables, that the august event it celebrates did not take place on the 25th of December. Supposing it be so, what have we to do with that? If so awful, so joyous an event ever took place on our earth, it is surely worth commemoration. It is theeventwe celebrate, not thetime. And if all Christians for eighteen hundred years, while warring and wrangling on a thousand other points, have agreed to give this one 25th of December to peace and good-will, who is he that shall gainsay them, and for an historic scruple turn his back on the friendly greetings of all Christendom? Such a man is capable of rewriting Milton's Christmas Hymn in the style of Sternhold and Hopkins.
In our house, however, Christmas has always been a high day, a day whose expectation has held waking all the little eyes in our bird's nest, when as yet there were only little ones there, each sleeping with one eye open, hoping to be the happy first to wish the merry Christmas and grasp the wonderful stocking.
This year our whole family train of married girls and boys, with the various toddling tribes thereto belonging, held high festival around a wonderful Christmas-tree, the getting-up and adorning of which had kept my wife and Jennie and myself busy for a week beforehand. If the little folks think these trees grow up in a night, without labor, they know as little about them as they do about most of the other blessings which rain down on their dear little thoughtless heads. Such scrambling and clambering and fussing and tying and untying, such alterations and rearrangements, such agilities in getting up and down and everywhere to tie on tapers and gold balls and glittering things innumerable, to hang airy dolls in graceful positions, to make branches bear stiffly up under loads of pretty things which threaten to make the tapers turn bottom upward! Part and parcel of all this was I, Christopher, most reckless of rheumatism, most careless of dignity, the round, bald top of my head to be seen emerging everywhere from the thick boughs of the spruce, now devising an airy settlement for some gossamer-robed doll, now adjusting far back on a stiff branch Tom's new little skates, now balancing bags of sugar-plums and candy, and now combating desperately with some contumacious taper that would turn slantwise or crosswise, or anywise but upward as a Christian taper should,—regardless of Mrs. Crowfield's gentle admonitions and suggestions, sitting up to most dissipated hours, springing out of bed suddenly to change some arrangement in the middle of the night, and up long before the lazy sun at dawn to execute still other arrangements. If that Christmas-tree had been a fort to be taken, or a campaign to be planned, I could not have spent more time and strength on it. My zeal so far outran even that ofsprightly Miss Jennie, that she could account for it only by saucily suggesting that papa must be fast getting into second childhood.
But didn't we have a splendid lighting-up? Didn't I and my youngest grandson, little Tom, head the procession magnificent in paper soldier-caps, blowing tin trumpets and beating drums, as we marched round the twinkling glories of our Christmas-tree, all glittering with red and blue and green tapers, and with a splendid angel on top with great gold wings, the cutting-out and adjusting of which had held my eyes waking for nights before? I had had oceans of trouble with that angel, owing to an unlucky sprain in his left wing, which had required constant surgical attention through the week, and which I feared might fall loose again at the important and blissful moment of exhibition: but no, the Fates were in our favor; the angel behaved beautifully, and kept his wings as crisp as possible, and the tapers all burned splendidly, and the little folks were as crazy with delight as my most ardent hopes could have desired; and then we romped and played and frolicked as long as little eyes could keep open, and long after; and so passed away our Christmas.
I had forgotten to speak of the Christmas-dinner, that solid feast of fat things, on which we also luxuriated. Mrs. Crowfield outdid all household traditions in that feast: the turkey and the chickens, the jellies and the sauces, the pies and the pudding, behold, are they not written in the tablets of Memory which remain to this day?
The holidays passed away hilariously, and at New-Year's I, according to time-honored custom, went forth to make my calls and see my fair friends, while my wife and daughters stayed at home to dispense the hospitalities of the day to their gentlemen friends. All was merry, cheerful, and it was agreed on all hands that a more joyous holiday season had never flown over us.
But, somehow, the week after, I began to be sensible of a running-down in the wheels. I had an article to write for the "Atlantic," but felt mopish and could not write. My dinner had not its usual relish, and I had an indefinite sense everywhere of something going wrong. My coal bill came in, and I felt sure we were being extravagant, and that our John Furnace wasted the coal. My grandsons and granddaughters came to see us, and I discovered that they had high-pitched voices, and burst in without wiping their shoes, and it suddenly occurred powerfully to my mind that they were not being well brought up,—evidently, they were growing up rude and noisy. I discovered several tumblers and plates with the edges chipped, and made bitter reflections on the carelessness of Irish servants; our crockery was going to destruction, along with the rest. Then, on opening one of my paper-drawers, I found that Jennie's one drawer of worsted had overflowed into two or three; Jennie was growing careless; besides, worsted is dear, and girls knit away small fortunes, without knowing it, on little duds that do nobody any good. Moreover, Maggie had three times put my slippers into the hall-closet, instead of leaving them where I wanted, under my study-table. Mrs. Crowfield ought to look after things more; every servant, from end to end of the house, was getting out of the traces; it was strange she did not see it.
All this I vented, from time to time, in short, crusty sayings and doings, as freely as if I hadn't just written an article on "Little Foxes" in the last "Atlantic," till at length my eyes were opened on my own state and condition.
It was evening, and I had just laid up the fire in the most approved style of architecture, and, projecting my feet into my slippers, sat spitefully cutting the leaves of a caustic review.
Mrs. Crowfield took the tongs and altered the disposition of a stick.
"My dear," I said, "I do wish you'd let the fire alone,—you always put it out."
"I was merely admitting a little air between the sticks," said my wife.
"You always make matters worse, when you touch the fire."
As if in contradiction, a bright tongueof flame darted up between the sticks, and the fire began chattering and snapping defiance at me. Now, if there's anything which would provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and snapped at in that way by a man's own fire. It's an unbearable impertinence. I threw out my leg impatiently, and hit Rover, who yelped a yelp that finished the upset of my nerves. I gave him a hearty kick, that he might have something to yelp for, and in the movement upset Jennie's embroidery-basket.
"Oh, papa!"
"Confound your baskets and balls! they are everywhere, so that a man can't move; useless, wasteful things, too."
"Wasteful?" said Jennie, coloring indignantly; for if there's anything Jennie piques herself upon, it's economy.
"Yes, wasteful,—wasting time and money both. Here are hundreds of shivering poor to be clothed, and Christian females sit and do nothing but crochet worsted into useless knicknacks. If they would be working for the poor, there would be some sense in it. But it's all just alike, no real Christianity in the world,—nothing but organized selfishness and self-indulgence."
"My dear," said Mrs. Crowfield, "you are not well to-night. Things are not quite so desperate as they appear. You haven't got over Christmas-week."
"I am well. Never was better. But I can see, I hope, what's before my eyes; and the fact is, Mrs. Crowfield, things must not go on as they are going. There must be more care, more attention to details. There's Maggie,—that girl never does what she is told. You are too slack with her, Ma'am. She will light the fire with the last paper, and she won't put my slippers in the right place; and I can't have my study made the general catch-all and menagerie for Rover and Jennie, and her baskets and balls, and for all the family litter."
Just at this moment I overheard a sort of aside from Jennie, who was swelling with repressed indignation at my attack on her worsted. She sat with her back to me, knitting energetically, and said, in a low, but very decisive tone, as she twitched her yarn,—
"Now ifIshould talk in that way, people would call mecross,—and that's the whole of it."
I pretended to be looking into the fire in an absent-minded state; but Jennie's words had started a new idea. Wasthatit? Was that the whole matter? Was it, then, a fact, that the house, the servants, Jennie and her worsteds, Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going on pretty much as usual, and that the only difficulty was that I wascross? How many times had I encouraged Rover to lie just where he was lying when I kicked him! How many times, in better moods, had I complimented Jennie on her neat little fancy-works, and declared that I liked the social companionship of ladies' work-baskets among my papers! Yes, it was clear. After all, things were much as they had been; only I was cross.
Cross.I put it to myself in that simple, old-fashioned word, instead of saying that I was out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the other smooth phrases with which we good Christians cover up our little sins of temper. "Here you are, Christopher," said I to myself, "a literary man, with a somewhat delicate nervous organization and a sensitive stomach, and you have been eating like a sailor or a ploughman; you have been gallivanting and merry-making and playing the boy for two weeks; up at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all sorts of boyish performances; and the consequence is, that, like a thoughtless young scapegrace, you have used up in ten days the capital of nervous energy that was meant to last you ten weeks. You can't eat your cake and have it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid source of cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensations and pleasant views, is all spent, you can't feel cheerful; things cannot look as they did when you were full of life and vigor. When the tide is out, there is nothing but unsightly, ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can't help it;but you can keep your senses,—you can know what is the matter with you,—you can keep from visiting your overdose of Christmas mince-pies and candies and jocularities on the heads of Mrs. Crowfield, Rover, and Jennie, whether in the form of virulent morality, pungent criticisms, or a free kick, such as you just gave the poor brute."
"Come here, Rover, poor dog!" said I, extending my hand to Rover, who cowered at the farther corner of the room, eying me wistfully,—"come here, you poor doggie, and make up with your master. There, there! Was his master cross? Well, he knows it. We must forgive and forget, old boy, mustn't we?" And Rover nearly broke his own back and tore me to pieces with his tumultuous tail-waggings.
"As for you, puss," I said to Jennie, "I am much obliged to you for your free suggestion. You must take my cynical moralities for what they are worth, and put your little traps into as many of my drawers as you like."
In short, I made it up handsomely all around,—even apologizing to Mrs. Crowfield, who, by the bye, has summered and wintered me so many years, and knows all my airs and cuts and crinkles so well, that she took my irritable unreasonable spirit as tranquilly as if I had been a baby cutting a new tooth.
"Of course, Chris, I knew what the matter was; don't disturb yourself," she said, as I began my apology; "we understand each other. But there is one thing I have to say; and that is, that your article ought to be ready."
"Ah, well, then," said I, "like other great writers, I shall make capital of my own sins, and treat of the second little family fox; and his name is—"
Irritability is, more than most unlovely states, a sin of the flesh. It is not, like envy, malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may suppose to belong equally to an embodied or a disembodied spirit. In fact, it comes nearer to being physical depravity than anything I know of. There are some bodily states, some conditions of the nerves, such that we could not conceive of even an angelic spirit confined in a body thus disordered as being able to do any more than simply endure. It is a state of nervous torture; and the attacks which the wretched victim makes on others are as much a result of disease as the snapping and biting of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia.
Then, again, there are other people who go through life loving and beloved, desired in every circle, held up in the church as examples of the power of religion, who, after all, deserve no credit for these things. Their spirits are lodged in an animal nature so tranquil, so cheerful, all the sensations which come to them are so fresh and vigorous and pleasant, that they cannot help viewing the world charitably and seeing everything through a glorified medium. The ill-temper of others does not provoke them; perplexing business never sets their nerves to vibrating; and all their lives long they walk in the serene sunshine of perfect animal health.
Look at Rover there. He is never nervous, never cross, never snaps or snarls, and is ready, the moment after the grossest affront, to wag the tail of forgiveness,—all because kind Nature has put his dog's body together so that it always works harmoniously. If every person in the world were gifted with a stomach and nerves like his, it would be a far better and happier world, no doubt. The man said a good thing who made the remark that the foundation of all intellectual and moral worth must be laid in a good healthy animal.
Now I think it is undeniable that the peace and happiness of the home-circle are very generally much invaded by the recurrence in its members of these states of bodily irritability. Every person, if he thinks the matter over, will see that his condition in life, the character of his friends, his estimate of their virtues and failings, his hopes and expectations, are all very much modifiedby these things. Cannot we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, persecuted individuals, all whose friends were unreasonable, whose life was full of trials and crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-singing morning to find all these illusions gone with the fogs of the night? Our friends are nice people, after all; the little things that annoyed us look ridiculous by bright sunshine; and we are fortunate individuals.
The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must consist of two things: first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily states; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we cannot ward them off.
Of course, the first of these is the most important; and yet, of all things, it seems to be least looked into and understood. We find abundant rules for the government of the tongue and temper; it is a slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cart-loads of wholesome instructions have been thrown; but how to get and keep that healthy state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the temptation to ill-temper and anger is a subject which moral and religious teachers seem scarcely to touch upon.
Now, without running into technical, physiological language, it is evident, as regards us human beings, that there is a power by which we live and move and have our being,—by which the brain thinks and wills, the stomach digests, the blood circulates, and all the different provinces of the little man-kingdom do their work. This something—call it nervous fluid, nervous power, vital energy, life-force, or anything else that you will—is a perfectly understood, if not a definable thing. It is plain, too, that people possess this force in very different degrees: some generating it as a high-pressure engine does steam, and using it constantly, with an apparently inexhaustible flow; and others who have little, and spend it quickly. We have a common saying, that this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous, irritable states of temper are the mere physical result of a used-up condition. The person has overspent his nervous energy,—like a man who should eat up on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week, and go growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of nervous force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its parts is seized on by some one monopolizing portion, and used up to the loss and detriment of the rest, Thus, with men of letters, an exorbitant brain expends on its own workings what belongs to the other offices of the body: the stomach has nothing to carry on digestion; the secretions are badly made; and the imperfectly assimilated nourishment, that is conveyed to every little nerve and tissue, carries with it an acrid, irritating quality, producing general restlessness and discomfort. So men and women go struggling on through their three-score and ten years, scarcely one in a thousand knowing through life that perfect balance of parts, that appropriate harmony of energies, that make a healthy, kindly animal condition, predisposing to cheerfulness and good-will.
We Americans are, to begin with, a nervous, excitable people. Multitudes of children, probably the great majority in the upper walks of life, are born into the world with weaknesses of the nervous organization, or of the brain or stomach, which make them incapable of any strong excitement or prolonged exertion without some lesion or derangement; so that they are continually being checked, laid up, and invalided in the midst of their drugs. Life here in America is so fervid, so fast, our climate is so stimulating, with its clear, bright skies, its rapid and sudden changes of temperature, that the tendencies to nervous disease are constantly aggravated.
Under these circumstances, unless men and women make a conscience, a religion, of saving and sparing something of themselves expressly for home-life and home-consumption, it must followthat home will often be merely a sort of refuge for us to creep into when we are used up and irritable.
Papa is up and off, after a hasty breakfast, and drives all day in his business, putting into it all there is in him, letting it drink up brain and nerve and body and soul, and coming home jaded and exhausted, so that he cannot bear the cry of the baby, and the frolics and pattering of the nursery seem horrid and needless confusion. The little ones say, in their plain vernacular, "Papa is cross."
Mamma goes out to a party that keeps her up till one or two in the morning, breathes bad air, eats indigestible food, and the next day is so nervous that every straw and thread in her domestic path is insufferable.
Papas that pursue business thus day after day, and mammas that go into company, as it is called, night after night, what is there left in or of them to make an agreeable fireside with, to brighten their home and inspire their children?
True, the man says he cannot help himself,—business requires it. But what is the need of rolling up money at the rate at which he is seeking to do it? Why not have less, and take some time to enjoy his home, and cheer up his wife, and form the minds of his children? Why spend himself down to the last drop on the world, and give to the dearest friends he has only the bitter dregs?
Much of the preaching which the pulpit and the Church have levelled at fashionable amusements has failed of any effect at all, because wrongly put. A cannonade has been opened upon dancing, for example, and all for reasons that will not, in the least, bear looking into. It is vain to talk of dancing as a sin because practised in a dying world where souls are passing into eternity. If dancing is a sin for this reason, so is playing marbles, or frolicking with one's children, or enjoying a good dinner, or doing fifty other things which nobody ever dreamed of objecting to.
If the preacher were to say that anything is a sin which uses up the strength we need for daily duties, and leaves us fagged out and irritable at just those times and in just those places when and where we need most to be healthy, cheerful, and self-possessed, he would say a thing that none of his hearers would dispute. If he should add, that dancing-parties, beginning at ten o'clock at night and ending at four o'clock in the morning, do use up the strength, weaken the nerves, and leave a person wholly unfit for any home duty, he would also be saying what very few people would deny; and then his case would be made out. If he should say that it is wrong to breathe bad air and fill the stomach with unwholesome dainties, so as to make one restless, ill-natured, and irritable for days after, he would also say what few would deny, and his preaching might have some hope of success.
The true manner of judging of the worth of amusements is to try them by their effects on the nerves and spirits the day after. True amusement ought to be, as the word indicates, recreation,—something that refreshes, turns us out anew, rests the mind and body by change, and gives cheerfulness and alacrity to our return to duty.
The true objection to all stimulants, alcoholic and narcotic, consists simply in this,—that they are a form of overdraft on the nervous energy, which helps us to use up in one hour the strength of whole days.
A man uses up all the fair, legal interest of nervous power by too much business, too much care, or too much amusement. He has now a demand to meet. He has a complicate account to make up, an essay or a sermon to write, and he primes himself by a cup of coffee, a cigar, a glass of spirits. This is exactly the procedure of a man who, having used the interest of his money, begins to dip into the principal. The strength a man gets in this way is just so much taken out of his life-blood; it is borrowing of a merciless creditor, who will exact, in time, the pound of flesh nearest his heart.
Much of the irritability which spoils home happiness is the letting-down from the over-excitement of stimulus. Some will drink coffee, when they own every day that it makes them nervous; some will drug themselves with tobacco, and some with alcohol, and, for a few hours of extra brightness, give themselves and their friends many hours when amiability or agreeableness is quite out of the question. There are people calling themselves Christians who live in miserable thraldom, forever in debt to Nature, forever overdrawing on their just resources, and using up their patrimony, because they have not the moral courage to break away from a miserable appetite.
The same may be said of numberless indulgences of the palate, which tax the stomach beyond its power, and bring on all the horrors of indigestion. It is almost impossible for a confirmed dyspeptic to act like a good Christian; but a good Christian ought not to become a confirmed dyspeptic. Reasonable self-control, abstaining from all unseasonable indulgence, may prevent or put an end to dyspepsia, and many suffer and make their friends suffer only because they will persist in eating what they know is hurtful to them.
But it is not merely in worldly business, or fashionable amusements, or the gratification of appetite, that people are tempted to overdraw and use up in advance their life-force. It is done in ways more insidious, because connected with our moral and religious faculties. There are religious exaltations beyond the regular pulse and beatings of ordinary nature, that quite as surely gravitate downward into the mire of irritability. The ascent to the third heaven lets even the Apostle down to a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him.
It is the temptation of natures in which the moral faculties predominate to overdo in the outward expression and activities of religion till they are used up and irritable, and have no strength left to set a good example in domestic life.
The Reverend Mr. X. in the pulpit to-day appears with the face of an angel; he soars away into those regions of exalted devotion where his people can but faintly gaze after him; he tells them of the victory that overcometh the world, of an unmoved faith that fears no evil, of a serenity of love that no outward event can ruffle; and all look after him and wonder, and wish they could so soar.
Alas! the exaltation which inspires these sublime conceptions, these celestial ecstasies, is a double and treble draft on Nature,—and poor Mrs. X. knows, when she hears him preaching, that days of miserable reaction are before her. He has been a fortnight driving before a gale of strong excitement, doing all the time twice or thrice as much as in his ordinary state he could, and sustaining himself by the stimulus of strong coffee. He has preached or exhorted every night, and conversed with religious inquirers every day, seeming to himself to become stronger and stronger, because every day more and more excitable and excited. To his hearers, with his flushed sunken cheek and his glittering eye, he looks like some spiritual being just trembling on his flight for upper worlds; but to poor Mrs. X., whose husband he is, things wear a very different aspect. Her woman and mother instincts tell her that he is drawing on his life-capital with both hands, and that the hours of a terrible settlement must come, and the days of darkness will be many. He who spoke so beautifully of the peace of a soul made perfect will not be able to bear the cry of his baby or the pattering feet of any of the poor little Xs., who must be sent
"Anywhere, anywhere,Out of his sight";
"Anywhere, anywhere,Out of his sight";
he who discoursed so devoutly of perfect trust in God will be nervous about the butcher's bill, sure of going to ruin because both ends of the salary don't meet; and he who could so admiringly tell of the silence of Jesus under provocation will but too often speak unadvisedly with his lips. Poor Mr. X. will be morally insane for days or weeks, and absolutely incapable of preaching Christ in the waythat is the most effective, by setting Him forth in his own daily example.
What then? must we not do the work of the Lord?
Yes, certainly; but the first work of the Lord, that for which provision is to be made in the first place, is to set a good example as a Christian man. Better labor for years steadily, diligently, doing every day only what the night's rest can repair, avoiding those cheating stimulants that overtax Nature, and illustrating the sayings of the pulpit by the daily life in the family, than to pass life in exaltations and depressions.
The same principles apply to hearers as to preachers. Religious services must be judged of like amusements, by their effect on the life. If an overdose of prayers, hymns, and sermons leaves us tired, nervous, and cross, it is only not quite as bad as an overdose of fashionable folly.
It could be wished that in every neighborhood there might be one or two calm, sweet, daily services which should morning and evening unite for a few solemn moments the hearts of all as in one family, and feed with a constant, unnoticed daily supply the lamp of faith and love. Such are some of the daily prayer-meetings which for eight or ten years past have held their even tenor in some of our New England cities, and such the morning and evening services which we are glad to see obtaining in the Episcopal churches. Everything which brings religion into habitual contact with life, and makes it part of a healthy, cheerful average living, we hail as a sign of a better day. Nothing is so good for health as daily devotion. It is the best soother of the nerves, the best antidote to care; and we trust erelong that all Christian people will be of one mind in this, and that neighborhoods will be families gathering daily around one altar, praying not for themselves merely, but for each other.
The conclusion of the whole matter is this: Set apart some provision to make merry withat home, and guard that reserve as religiously as the priests guarded the shew-bread in the temple. However great you are, however good, however wide the general interests that you may control, you gain nothing by neglecting home-duties. You must leave enough of yourself to be able to bear and forbear, give and forgive, and be a source of life and cheerfulness around the hearthstone. The great sign given by the Prophets of the coming of the Millennium is,—what do you suppose?—"He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."
Thus much on avoiding unhealthy, irritable states.
But it still remains that a large number of people will be subject to them unavoidably for these reasons.
First.The use of tobacco, alcohol, and other kindred stimulants, for so many generations, has vitiated the brain and nervous system, so that it is not what it was in former times. Michelet treats of this subject quite at large in some of his late works; and we have to face the fact of a generation born with an impaired nervous organization, who will need constant care and wisdom to avoid unhealthy, morbid irritation.
There is a temperament called thehypochondriac, to which many persons, some of them the brightest, the most interesting, the most gifted, are born heirs,—a want of balance of the nervous powers, which tends constantly to periods of high excitement and of consequent depression,—an unfortunate inheritance for the possessor, though accompanied often with the greatest talents. Sometimes, too, it is the unfortunate lot of those who have not talents, who bear its burdens and its anguish without its rewards.
People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which they have to do.
Now the highest philosophy for persons thus afflicted is to understand themselvesand their tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom and depression are just as much a form of disease as a fever or a toothache, to know that it is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind with wretched illusions, to make them seem miserable and unlovely to themselves, to make their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, to make all events appear to be going wrong and tending to destruction and ruin.
The evils and burdens of such a temperament are half removed when a man once knows that he has it and recognizes it for a disease, when he does not trust himself to speak and act in those bitter hours as if there were any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. He who has not attained to this wisdom overwhelms his friends and his family with the waters of bitterness; he stings with unjust accusations, and makes his fireside dreadful with fancies which are real to him, but false as the ravings of fever.
A sensible person, thus diseased, who has found out what ails him, will shut his mouth resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark thoughts that infest his soul.
A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods, once said to me, "My dear Sir, there are times when I know I am possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak." And so this wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, cheerful reticence, leaving always the impression of a cheery, kindly temper, when, if she had spoken out a tithe of what she thought and felt in her morbid hours, she would have driven all her friends from her, and made others as miserable as she was herself. She was a sunbeam, a life-giving presence in every family, by the power of self-knowledge and self-control.
Such victories as this are the victories of real saints.
But if the victim of these glooms is once tempted to lift their heavy load by the use ofany stimulus whatever, he or she is a lost man or woman. It is from this sad class more than any other that the vast army of drunkards and opium-eaters is recruited. The hypochondriacs belong to the class so well described by that brilliant specimen of them, Dr. Johnson,—those who can practiseabstinence, but nottemperance. They cannot, they will not be moderate. Whatever stimulant they take for relief will create an uncontrollable appetite, a burning passion. The temperament itself lies in the direction of insanity. It needs the most healthful, careful, even regime and management to keep it within the bounds of soundness; but the introduction of stimulants deepens its gloom almost to madness.
All parents, in the education of their children, should look out for and understand the signs of this temperament. It appears in early childhood; and a child inclined to fits of depression should be marked as a subject of the most thoughtful, painstaking physical and moral training. All over-excitement and stimulus should be carefully avoided, whether in the way of study, amusement, or diet. Judicious education may do much to mitigate the unavoidable pains and penalties of this most undesirable inheritance.
The second class of persons who need wisdom in the control of their moods is that large class whose unfortunate circumstances make it impossible for them to avoid constantly overdoing and overdrawing upon their nervous energies, and who therefore are always exhausted and worn out. Poor souls, who labor daily under a burden too heavy for them, and whose fretfulness and impatience are looked upon with sorrow, not anger, by pitying angels. Poor mothers, with families of little children clinging round them, and a baby that never lets them sleep; hard-working men, whose utmost toil, day and night, scarcely keeps the wolf from the door; and all the hard-laboring, heavy-laden, on whom the burdens of life press far beyond their strength.
There are but two things we know of for these,—two only remedies for the irritation that comes of these exhaustions:the habit of silence towards men, and of speech towards God. The heart must utter itself or burst; but let it learn to commune constantly and intimately with One always present and always sympathizing. This is the great, the only safeguard against fretfulness and complaint. Thus and thus only can peace spring out of confusion, and the breaking chords of an overtaxed nature be strung anew to a celestial harmony.
The popular lecture, in the Northern States of America, has become, in Yankee parlance, "an institution"; and it has attained such prevalence and power that it deserves more attention and more respect from those who assume the control of the motive influences of society than it has hitherto received. It has been the habit of certain literary men, (more particularly of such as do not possess a gift for public speech,) and of certain literary magazines, (managed by persons of delicate habit and weak lungs,) to regard and to treat the popular lecture with a measure of contempt. For the last fifteen years the downfall of what has been popularly denominated "The Lecture System" has been confidently predicted by those who, granting them the wisdom which they assume, should have been so well acquainted with its nature and its adaptation to a permanent popular want as to see that it must live and thrive until something more practicable can be contrived to take its place. If anything more interesting, cheaper, simpler, or more portable can be found than a vigorous man, with a pleasant manner, good voice, and something to say, then the popular lecture will certainly be superseded; but the man who will invent this substitute is at present engaged on a new order of architecture and the problem of perpetual motion, with such prospect of full employment for the present as will give "the lecture system" sufficient time to die gracefully. An institution which can maintain its foothold in the popular regard throughout such a war as has challenged the interest and taxed the energies of this nation during the last three years is one which will not easily die; and the history of the popular lecture proves, that, wherever it has been once established, it retains its place through all changes of social material and all phases of political and religious influence. Circumstances there may be which will bring intermissions in its yearly operations; but no instance can be found of its permanent relinquishment by a community which has once enjoyed its privileges, and acquired a taste for the food and inspiration which it furnishes.
An exposition of the character of the popular lecture, the machinery by which it is supported, and the results which it aims at and accomplishes, cannot be without interest to thoughtful readers.
What is the popular lecture in America? It will not help us in this inquest to refer to a dictionary; for it is not necessary that the performance which Americans call a lecture should be an instructive discourse at all. A lecture before the Young Men's Associations and lecture organizations of the country is any characteristic utterance of any man who speaks in their employment. The word "lecture" covers generally generically all the orations, declamations, dissertations, exhortations, recitations, humorous extravaganzas, narratives of travel, harangues, sermons, semi-sermons, demi-semi-sermons, and lectures proper, which can be crowded into what is called "a course," but which might be more properly called a bundle,the bundle depending for its size upon the depth of the managerial purse. Ten or twelve lectures are the usual number, although in some of the larger cities, beginning early in "the lecture season," and ending late, the number given may reach twenty.
The machinery for the management and support of these lectures is as simple as possible, the lecturers themselves having nothing to do with it. There are library associations or lyceum associations, composed principally of young men, in all the cities and large villages, which institute and manage courses of lectures every winter, for the double purpose of interesting and instructing the public and replenishing their treasury. The latter object, it must be confessed, occupies the principal place, although, as it depends for its attainment on the success of the former, the public is as well served as if its entertainment were alone consulted. In the smaller towns there are usually temporary associations, organized for the simple purpose of obtaining lecturers and managing the business incident to a course. Not unfrequently, ten, twenty, or thirty men pledge themselves to make up any deficiency there may be in the funds required for the season's entertainments, and place the management in the hands of a committee. Sometimes two or three persons call themselves a lecture-committee, and employ lecturers, themselves risking the possible loss, and dividing among themselves any profits which their course may produce. The opposition or independent courses in the larger cities are often instituted by such organizations,—sometimes, indeed, by a single person, who has a natural turn for this sort of enterprise. The invitations to lecturers are usually sent out months in advance, though very few courses are definitely provided for and arranged before the first of November. The fees of lecturers range from fifty to a hundred dollars. A few uniformly command the latter sum, and lecture-committees find it for their interest to employ them. It is to be presumed that the universal rise of prices will change these figures somewhat.
The popular lecture is the most purely democratic of all our democratic institutions. The people hear a second time only those who interest them. If a lecturer cannot engage the interest of his audience, his fame or greatness or learning will pass for nothing. A lecture-audience will forgive extravagance, but never dulness. They will give a man one chance to interest them, and if he fails, that is the last of him. The lecture-committees understand this, and gauge the public taste or the public humor as delicately as the most accomplished theatrical manager. The man who receives their invitation may generally be certain that the public wish either to see or hear him. Popularity is the test. Only popularity after trial, or notoriety before, can draw houses. Only popularity and notoriety can pay expenses and swell the balance of profit. Notoriety in the various walks of life and the personal influence of friends and admirers can usually secure a single hearing, but no outside influence can keep a lecturer permanently in the field. If the people "love to hear" him, he can lecture from Maine to California six months in the year; if not, he cannot get so much as a second invitation.
One of the noticeable features of the public humor in this matter is the aversion to professional lecturers,—to those who make lecturing a business, with no higher aim than that of getting a living. No calling or profession can possibly be more legitimate than that of the lecturer; there is nothing immodest or otherwise improper in the advertisement of a man's literary wares; yet it is true, beyond dispute, that the public do not regard with favor those who make lecturing their business, particularly if they present themselves uninvited. So well is this understood by this class of lecturers that a part of their machinery consists of invitations numerously signed, which invitations are written and circulated by themselves, their interested friends, or their authorized agents,and published as their apology for appearing. A man who has no other place in the world than that which he makes for himself on the platform is never a popular favorite, unless he uses the platform for the advocacy of some great philanthropic movement or reform, into which he throws unselfishly the leading efforts of his life. Referring to the history of the last twenty years, it will readily be seen that those who have undertaken to make lecturing a business, without side pursuit or superior aim, are either retired from the field or are very low in the public favor. The public insist, that, in order to be an acceptable lecturer, a man must be something else, that he must begin and remain something else; and it will be found to-day that those only who work worthily in other fields have a permanent hold upon the affections of lecture-going people. It is the public judgment or caprice that the work of the lecturer shall be incidental to some worthy pursuit, from which that work temporarily calls him. There seems to be a kind of coquetry in this. The public do not accept of those who are too openly in the market or who are too easily won. They prefer to entice a man from his chosen love, and account his favors sweeter because the wedded favorite is deprived of them.
A lecturer's first invitation, in consonance with these facts, is almost always suggested by his excellence or notoriety in some department of life that may or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to lecture; but he is no more certain to be invited than he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invitation for the same reason that an author does,—because he is notorious. Nearly all new men in the lecture-field are introduced through the popular desire to see notorious or famous people. A man whose name is on the popular tongue is a man whom the popular eye desires to see. Such a man will always draw one audience; and a single occasion is all that he is engaged for. After getting a place upon the platform, it is for him to prove his power to hold it. If he does not lecture as well as he writes, or fights, or walks, or lifts, or leaps, or hunts lions, or manages an exhibition, or plays a French horn, or does anything which has made him a desirable man for curious people to see, then he makes way for the next notoriety. Very few courses of lectures are delivered in the cities and larger villages that do not present at least one new man, who is invited simply because people are curious to see him. The popular desire is strong to come in some way into personal contact with those who do remarkable things. They cannot be chased in the street; they can be seen only to a limited extent in the drawing-room; but it is easy to pay twenty-five cents to hear them lecture, with the privilege of looking at them for an hour and criticizing them for a week.
It is a noteworthy fact, in this connection, that, while there are thousands of cultivated men who would esteem it a privilege to lecture for the lecturer's usual fee, there are hardly more than twenty-five in the country whom the public considers it a privilege worth paying for to hear. It is astonishing, that, in a country so fertile as this in the production of gifted and cultivated men, so few find it possible to establish themselves upon the platform as popular favorites. If the accepted ones were in a number of obvious particulars alike, there could be some intelligent generalizing upon the subject; but men possessing fewer points of resemblance, or presenting stronger contrasts, in style of person and performance, than the established favorites of lecture-going people, cannot be found in the world; and if any generalization be attempted, it must relate to matters below the surface and beyond the common apprehension. It is certain that not always the greatest or the most brilliant or the most accomplished men are to be found among the popular lecturers. A man may make a great, even a brilliant speech on an important public question, and be utterly dreary in the lecture-room.There are multitudes of eloquent clergymen who in their pulpits command the attention of immense congregations, yet who meet with no acknowledgment of power upon the platform.
In a survey of those who are the established favorites, it will be found that there are no slaves among them. The people will not accept those who are creed-bound, or those who bow to any authority but God and themselves. They insist that those who address them shall be absolutely free, and that they shall speak only for themselves. Party and sectarian spokesmen find no permanent place upon the platform. It is only when a lecturer cuts loose from all his conventional belongings, and speaks with thought and tongue unfettered, that he finds his way to the popular heart. This freedom has sometimes been considered dangerous by the more conservative members of society; and they have not unfrequently managed to get the lectures into their own hands, or to organize courses representing more moderate views in matters of society, politics, and religion; but their efforts have uniformly proved failures. The people have always refused to support lectures which brought before them the bondmen of creeds and parties. Year after year men have been invited to address audiences three fourths of whom disagreed utterly with the sentiments and opinions which it was well understood such men would present, simply because they were free men, with minds of their own and tongues that would speak those minds or be dumb. Names could be mentioned of those who for the last fifteen years have been established favorites in communities which listened to them respectfully, nay, applauded them warmly, and then abused them for the remainder of the year.
It is not enough, however, that a lecturer be free. He must have something fresh to say, or a fresh and attractive way of saying that which is not altogether new. Individuality, and a certain personal quality which, for lack of a better name, is called magnetism, are also essential to the popular lecturer. People desire to be moved, to be acted upon by a strong and positive nature. They like to be furnished with fresh ideas, or with old ideas put into a fresh and practical form, so that they can be readily apprehended and appropriated.
And here comes the grand difficulty which every lecturer encounters, and over which so many stumble into failure,—that of interesting and refreshing men and women of education and culture, and, at the same time, of pleasing, moving, and instructing those of feebler acquirements or no acquirements at all. Most men of fine powers fail before a popular audience, because they do not fully apprehend the thing to be done. They almost invariably write above the level of one half of their audience, and below the level of the other half. In either event, they fail, and have the mortification of seeing others of inferior gifts succeed through a nicer adaptation of their literary wares to the wants of the market. Much depends upon the choice of a subject. If that be selected from those which touch universal interests and address common motives, half the work is done. A clear, simple, direct style of composition, apt illustration, (and the power of this is marvellous,) and a distinct and pleasant delivery, will do much to complete the success.
It is about equally painful and amusing to witness the efforts which some men make to write down to the supposed capacity of a popular audience. The puerilities and buffooneries that are sometimes undertaken by these men, for the purpose of conciliating the crowd, certainly amuse the crowd, and so answer their end, though not in a way to bring reputation to the actors. No greater mistake can possibly be made than that of regarding an American lecture-going audience with contempt. There is no literary tribunal in this country that can more readily and justly decide whether a man has anything to say, and can say it well, than a lecture-audience in one of thesmaller cities and larger villages of the Northern States. It is quite common to suppose that a Western audience demands a lower grade of literary effort, and a rougher style of speech, than an Eastern audience. Indeed, there are those who suppose that a lecture which would fully meet the demands of an average Eastern audience would be beyond the comprehension of an average Western audience; but the lecturer who shall accept any such assumption as this will find himself very unpleasantly mistaken. At the West, the lecture is both popular and fashionable, and the best people attend it. A lecturer may always be certain, then, that the best he can do will be thoroughly appreciated. The West is not particularly tolerant of dull men; but if a man be alive, he will find a market there for the best thought he produces.
In the larger cities of the East, the opera, the play, the frequent concert, the exhibition, the club-house, the social assembly, and a variety of public gatherings and public excitements, take from the lecture-audiences the class that furnishes the best material in the smaller cities; so that a lecturer rarely or never sees his best audiences in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia.
Another requisite to popularity upon the platform is earnestness. Those who imagine that a permanent hold upon the people can be obtained by amusing them are widely mistaken. The popular lecture has fallen into disrepute with many worthy persons in consequence of the admission of buffoons and triflers to the lecturer's platform; and it is an evil which ought to be remedied. It is an evil, indeed, which is slowly working its own remedy. It is a disgraceful fact, that, in order to draw together crowds of people, men have been admitted to the platform whose notoriety was won by the grossest of literary charlatanism,—men whose only hold upon the public was gained by extravagances of thought and expression which would compromise the dignity and destroy the self-respect of any man of character and common sense. It is not enough that these persons quickly disgust their audiences, and have a brief life upon the list. They ought never to be introduced to the public as lecturers; and any momentary augmentation of receipts that may be secured from the rabble by the patronage of such mountebanks is more than lost by the disgrace they bring and the damage they do to what is called "The Lecture System." It is an insult to any lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than the stage-clown and the negro-minstrel.
But the career of triflers is always short. Only he who feels that he has something to do in making the world wiser and better, and who, in a bold and manly way, tries persistently to do it, is always welcome; and this fact—an incontrovertible one—is a sufficient vindication of the popular lecture from all the aspersions that have been cast upon it by disappointed aspirants for its honors, and shallow observers of its tendencies and results.
The choice of a subject has already been spoken of as a matter of importance, and a word should be said touching its manner of treatment. This introduces a discussion of the kind of lecture which at the present time is mainly in demand. Many wise and good men have questioned the character of the popular lecture. In their view, it does not add sufficiently to the stock of popular knowledge. The results are not solid and tangible. They would prefer scientific, or historical, or philosophical discourses. This conviction is so strong with these men, and the men themselves are so much respected, that the people are inclined to coincide with them in the matter of theory, while at the same time they refuse to give their theory practical entertainment. One reason why scientific and historical lectures are not popular is to be foundin the difficulty of obtaining lecturers who have sufficient ingenuity and enthusiasm to make such lectures interesting. The number of men in the United States who can make such lectures attractive to popular audiences can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. We have had but one universally popular lecturer on astronomy in twenty years, and he is now numbered among the precious sacrifices of the war. There is only one entirely acceptable popular lecturer on the natural sciences in New England; and what is he among so many?
But this class of lectures has not been widely successful, even under the most favorable circumstances, and with the very best lecturers; and it is to be observed, that they grow less successful with the increasing intelligence of the people. In this fact is to be found an entirely rational and competent explanation of their failure. The schools have done so much toward popularizing science, and the circulating-library has rendered so familiar the prominent facts of history, that men and women do not go to the lecture to learn, and, as far as any appreciably practical benefit is concerned, do not need to go. It is only when some eminent enthusiast in these walks of learning consents to address them that they come out, and then it is rather to place themselves under the influence of his personality than to acquire the knowledge which he dispenses. Facts, if they are identified in any special way with the experience and life of the lecturer, are always acceptable; but facts which are recorded in books find a poor market in the popular lecture-room. Thus, while purely historical and scientific lectures are entirely neglected, narratives of personal travel, which, combine much of historical and scientific interest, have been quite popular, and, indeed, have been the specialties of more than one of the most popular of American lecturers, whose names will be suggested at once by this statement.
Twenty years ago the first popular lectures on anatomy and physiology were given, and a corps of lecturers came up and swept over the whole country, with much of interest and instruction to the people and no small profit to themselves. These lectures called the attention of educators to these sciences. Text-books for schools and colleges were prepared, and anatomy and physiology became common studies for the young. In various ways, through school-books and magazines and newspapers, there has accumulated a stock of popular knowledge of these sciences, and an apprehension of the limit of their practical usefulness, which have quite destroyed the demand for lectures upon them. Though a new generation has risen since the lecture on anatomy and physiology was the rage, no leaner field could possibly be found than that which the country now presents to the popular lecturer on these sciences. These facts are interesting in themselves, and they serve to illustrate the truth of that which has been stated touching lectures upon general historical and scientific subjects.
For facts alone the modern American public does not go hungry. American life is crowded with facts, to which the newspaper gives daily record and diffusion. Ideas, motives, thoughts, these are always in demand. Men wish for nothing more than to know how to classify their facts, what to do with them, how to govern them, and how far to be governed by them; and the man who takes the facts with which the popular life has come into contact and association, and draws from them their nutritive and motive power, and points out their relations to individual and universal good, and organizes around them the popular thought, and uses them to give direction to the popular life, and does all this with masterly skill, is the man whose houses are never large enough to contain those who throng to hear him. This is the popular lecturer,par excellence. The people have an earnest desire to know what a strong, independent, free man has to say about those facts which touch the experience, the direction, and theduty of their daily life; and the lecturer who with a hearty human sympathy addresses himself to this desire, and enters upon the service with genuine enthusiasm, wins the highest reward there is to be won in his field of effort.
The more ill-natured critics of the popular lecturer have reflected with ridicule upon his habit of repetition, A lecturer in full employment will deliver the same discourse perhaps fifty or a hundred times in a single season. There are probably half a dozen favorite lectures which have been delivered from two hundred to five hundred times within the last fifteen years. It does, indeed, at first glance, seem ridiculous for a man to stand, night after night, and deliver the same words, with the original enthusiasm apparently at its full height; and some lecturers, with an extra spice of mirthfulness in their composition, have given public record of their impressions in this respect. There are, however, certain facts to be considered which at least relieve him from the charge of literary sterility. A lecture often becomes famous, and is demanded by each succeeding audience, whatever the lecturer's preferences may be. There are lectures called for every year by audiences and committees which the lecturer would be glad never to see again, and which he never would see again, if he were to consult his own judgment alone. Then the popular lecturer, as has been already intimated, is usually engaged during two thirds of the year in some business or profession whose duties forbid the worthy preparation of more than one discourse for winter use. Then, if he has numerous engagements, he has neither time nor strength to do more than his nightly work; for, among all the pursuits in which literary men engage, none is more exhaustive in its demands upon the nervous energy than that of constant lecturing. The fulfilment of from seventy-five to ninety engagements involves, in round numbers, ten thousand miles of railroad-travel, much of it in the night, and all of it during the most unpleasant season of the year. There is probably nothing short of a military campaign that is attended by so many discomforts and genuine hardships as a season of active lecturing. Unless a man be young and endowed with an extraordinary amount of vital power, he becomes entirely unfitted by his nightly work, and the dissipation consequent upon constant change of scene, for consecutive thought and elaborate composition.