Chapter IV (4)

Mr. Eggleston’s introduction of James Whitcomb Riley put the poet in trim for his best Hoosier interpretations, and before he had finished his recital everybody in that audience was Hoosier more or less.

General Porter was saved for the last. His witty introduction of the French humorist was the climax of the day. There had been so much Indiana and Hoosier in the programme, he said, that he felt a little embarrassed and discouraged, as the only novelty about his candidate for the audience’s amusement was that he was not from Indiana.

It was an interesting two hours’ display of ability and genius, wit and humor, such as would be difficult to reproduce at the present time.

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE LYCEUM FIELD

James Redpath.--No reference to the American lyceum, its lecturers or lectures, would be complete without telling something about the many-sided man who picked up the famous old lyceum system that had done so much to “educate and agitate” back in the fifties and sixties, and who created out of its wonderful fragments the equally notable plan of entertainment and lecturing which then took its place.

Previous to Mr. James Redpath’s establishment of the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, the entertainment agency system of to-day had no existence; and to Mr. James Redpath, in connection with his energetic partner, Mr. George L. Fall, deceased, belongs the credit of instituting the bureau system, by means of which nearly all the lecture business of the country is now conducted. That I have had so much to do with this more latterly is due largely to my good fortune in knowing so well his methods, while winning and holding the personal friendship of the founder of “Redpath’s Lyceum Bureau.”

Mr. James Redpath was born in Berwick-on-Tweed, England, August 24, 1833, coming to this country in 1848 with his family. For two or three years he worked as a printer at Kalamazoo, Detroit, and Chicago, then went to New York, where he began to write for the daily and weekly press, and soon afterward became editorially connected with the New York _Tribune_.

His health failing, in 1854 he started on a tour on foot through the Southern seaboard States to see with his own eyes what slavery was. When winter set in he renewed his journey, partly on foot and partly by railroads and steamers, until he reached New Orleans. During all this long journey he talked with the slaves, slept in their cabins, ate of their humble fare, and listened to their distressing revelations. These conversations Mr. Redpath took down in shorthand, and sent a series of letters, descriptive of his walks and talks, to the New York _Anti-Slavery Standard_ (William Lloyd Garrison’s paper)--letters which were afterward collected and published, and which elicited the highest praise of the leaders of the anti-slavery party.

From New Orleans Mr. Redpath went to St. Louis, where he at once obtained a position as reporter on the _Missouri Democrat_, a Republican daily paper. In 1855 the proprietors of that journal sent him to Kansas to report the proceedings of the “bogus legislature” convened at the Shawnee Mission. His reports of its proceedings and his descriptions of the scenes which took place were copied far and wide by the Republican press, and gave him at once a national reputation.

I was an awkward boy of eighteen, working at the “case” in beleaguered Lawrence, Kansas Territory, during the summer of 1856, and was drawn to the keen-witted, brave, friendly, and untiring young fellow who was constantly on the move as special correspondent of the New York _Tribune_ and of the old _Missouri Democrat_ of St. Louis. I had been reared on the old _Try-bune_ up in the Wisconsin pioneer home where my boyhood was passed. That’s why I found myself out there in that Kansas summer of danger. When Redpath asked me to go to Prairie City with him--he was intending to interview John Brown, and it was dangerous--I was eager to go, because his articles in the _Tribune_ had caused me to look upon him almost as a god, and where he went it was my ambition to follow.

In October, 1856, during the time of the blockade of the Missouri River by the border ruffians, Mr. Redpath led in an armed company of immigrants, whom he had brought overland from Illinois, and succeeded in locating them on the free soil of Kansas. He remained there for some months, taking an active part in Free State politics, and still acting as correspondent of the _Missouri Democrat_, the Chicago _Tribune_, and the New York _Tribune_. Early in 1857 he left Kansas for Massachusetts, married, and resided at Malden, near Boston, until 1875, when he moved to New York.

In the fall of 1857 he went to Kansas to establish a weekly newspaper, and at Doniphan, December 15th, he issued the first number of _The Crusader of Freedom_. It was a radical anti-slavery journal; but owing to the failure of parties who had agreed to support him to fulfil their pledges, he was obliged to discontinue it, after three months’ publication, and returned to Boston.

At the time of John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, the press of all parties cried out against the act, and denounced old John Brown as a madman and a murderer. Mr. Redpath, who had long been on terms of intimacy with Brown, published a series of articles in his defence, and indorsed the step he had taken. These letters were followed by a “Life of John Brown,” which was written in three weeks. It was published in December, 1859, and had a sale of forty thousand copies. It was followed by the “Echoes of Harper’s Ferry,” which was a collection of the best speeches, sermons, articles, etc., relating to John Brown’s raid, and by “Southern Notes for National Circulation,” a large pamphlet exhibiting the character of the Southern people as seen by their acts following the execution of John Brown and some of his captured followers.

In 1863 Mr. Redpath began business as a publisher; but finding it uncongenial to his tastes, he soon abandoned it. His life from the fall of 1864 to 1866 was spent in the South, chiefly as army correspondent of Northern journals. He was at Atlanta with General Sherman, at the battle of Nashville with General Thomas, and with General Steadman and Colonel Rousseau in their movements to flank General Hood. Having accepted an offer from the New York _Tribune_ to join Sherman’s army, Mr. Redpath arrived in South Carolina in time to send the first report of the capture of Charleston to the North. General Sherman having gone forward, Mr. Redpath was appointed to superintend the white and colored schools of that city, and resigned his office as correspondent. During his three or four months’ stay in Charleston he organized all the day schools, and established night schools for adults; he instituted a public reading-room and library for the freedmen, recruited the first colored militia companies, founded an asylum for colored orphans, and established the custom, which has since become national, of decorating the graves of those who fell in the war. _He was the founder of Decoration Day._ On its first celebration, which occurred in Charleston, S. C., on the first day of May, 1865, upward of ten thousand persons, with a full battalion of soldiers, were present, and advantage was taken of the occasion to consecrate the ground where the martyrs of the Civil War were buried, the ground having been previously enclosed by the colored people of the district. Mr. Redpath was afterward appointed General Superintendent of Education of the Freedmen for the “Department of the South,” which included South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; but he did not accept the position, as business affairs obliged him to leave that part of the country.

On his return to the North, Mr. Redpath devoted himself exclusively to journalism, and contributed to the leading newspapers of New York and Boston until 1868. In that year he established the Boston Lyceum Bureau--now the Redpath Lyceum Bureau--in conjunction with Mr. George L. Fall, and up to October, 1874, was engaged chiefly in this sphere of labor. The bureau, it is now generally admitted, has done more than any other agency to revive the lecture system, which was rapidly dying out all over the country. Since the establishment of the bureau, the number of lectures given in the United States has increased tenfold, chiefly under the impulse which it gave to the system. It has more than quadrupled the number of lectures that were given in New England when it was organized.

“Jim” Redpath did several first things, to some of which I have already made reference. He was also the first “interviewer” in the United States, as his “interview” (as he called it in the _Tribune_) with old John Brown, which I witnessed, giving the Puritan leader’s account of the fight with Henry Clay Pate at “Black Jack”--one of the memorable events of the “Free State” struggle--was the earliest of actual newspaper interviews. He afterward popularized this form of getting at public men’s opinions in an easy way by calling those he had early in the Civil War days with Charles Sumner, “Stump Speeches in Slippers.”

As I think of my friend, whose name to the public was perhaps written in water, I wonder why he was not wider, better, and more enduringly known.

Some one has told me of an old clergyman who in his later years had slipped from all organization and yet managed to keep actively engaged in sermonizing and teaching. Some one asked him what church he was “ministering to.” His reply was, “The Church of Divine Fragments.” The last words seem to me always to fit the years and career of James Redpath. His days and his intellect were made indeed of “divine fragments.” Every ethical breath or cause seemed to draw him, but he did not remain to round out either the cause or his own work. But what a lot of service, according to his light, he rendered! The anti-slavery struggle captured his clear-brained youth. His courage, moral and physical alike, was beyond compare. The remarkable series of letters that he wrote, “unsigned,” from the slave States in the winter of 1855-56, of the long journeys “a-foot” that he made among the slaves and non-slave-holding whites, would have made him world-famous could they have fitted to and happened in these days. Then his equally remarkable journeys in Ireland, nearly thirty years later, during the early Land League agitation, the account of which also appeared in the New York _Tribune_, were almost equal to them for the peril encountered and the high courage displayed. Between these two points Redpath had been the first superintendent of non-racial public schools in Charleston, S. C., and had also been the first Northern journalist to interview Jefferson Davis, whom he invited to a lecture tour in the Union States. His life was full of large beginnings and alive with “divine fragments,” dramatic contrasts, and active with vigorous work, so that while he moved, and where he did so, he for the time being filled the centre of the stage. Yet he has left little behind him, and that little is fading. He published “The Roving Editor,” a record of his audacious journeys and insurrectionary agitation in the seaboard slave States--a book that is quite forgotten and of which copies are not easily to be found. He wrote “The Public Life of John Brown,” which was published within twenty days of the latter’s execution in Virginia, and during the last year of his life he wrote “The Life of Jefferson Davis.”

At one time Redpath entered the service of “The Black Republic”--Hayti--planning an exodus to it of our free colored people and, _sub rosa_, it has been said, an extended slave insurrection, which Fort Sumter made nugatory. Yet he had no war record, civic or military, except for a brief space as a recruiting officer of colored troops. It is reported that he got possessed with some Tolstoian views against war, yet there never lived a braver man than James Redpath. In his last years he identified himself with Henry George’s single-tax views, after he had been managing editor, under Thorndyke Rice, of _The North American Review_.

But his enduring public monument is the early shaping of the American lecture-platform system as we now see it, and the enduring personal, even tender regard with which all who knew James Redpath continue to hold him in memory. No man was more loved and admired by those who knew him well. Even those who in later years differed widely from him on personal grounds speak of him still in terms of lingering affection and loving regret.

THE LYCEUM.

The lyceum platform stands for ability, genius, education, reform, and entertainment. On it the greatest readers, orators, and thinkers have stood. On it reform has found her noblest advocates, literature her finest expression, progress her bravest pleaders, and humor its happiest translations. Some of the most gifted, most highly educated, and warmest-hearted men and women of the English-speaking race have in the last fifty years given their best efforts to the lyceum, and by their noble utterances have made its platform not only historic, but symbolic of talent, education, genius, and reform.

Until the Redpath Lyceum Bureau was founded by James Redpath in Boston, in 1867, lecture committees were in the habit of applying to lecturers or readers direct. These committees were usually made up from the leading citizens of the town, with a view to securing the services of the ablest men and women of letters for the entertainment of their public. The fee was generally nominal, but sufficient to cover the actual expenses of the star and furnish a small honorarium. Edward Everett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John B. Gough, Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, Garrison, Sumner, Lowell, Edward Everett Hale, Bayard Taylor, Frederick Douglass, Dr. Chapin, Henry Ward Beecher, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna E. Dickinson, and Mary A. Livermore were the principal men and women of letters obtainable on these conditions.

Among the great readers who could attract large metropolitan audiences year after year were George Vandenhoff and James E. Murdoch--famous Shakespearian actors in their day--Professor Churchill of Andover, Prof. Robert R. Raymond, and Charlotte Cushman. All of these were attractions wherever they appeared. Mr. Shillaber (“Mrs. Partington”) as a humorous lecturer was also very popular. Of course there were many lesser lights, but the platform stars available before the war could almost be numbered on one’s fingers.

The lyceum had never been regarded by these gifted advocates of reform and progress from the point of view of “revenue only.” In every city and village there was a lyceum, sustained by the people for the purpose of furnishing the best courses of lectures and entertainments. The expenses for talent being light, and attractions of the highest class being popular, most lyceums were financially prosperous.

At that time music had not been introduced into the courses, which were at once the pride and the boast of every community. Then the music hall and town hall were considered the only proper places for wholesome entertainments, such as concerts and lectures. The religious element predominated in getting up courses of lectures. New England town and public halls were all arranged for lectures and concerts, with an express proviso that no entertainment should be given that required a drop-curtain. A year or two after the war, when over a million men had returned from military strife to civil pursuits, having been through four years of excitement that rendered it next to impossible to settle quietly down, there came an unprecedented demand for entertainments and amusements. The men and women nearest to the hearts of the public were those whose patriotism and ability had made their names household words during the war, and they were sought after for lectures all over the country.

It was about this time (1867) that James Redpath, one of the earliest founders of “The Freedman’s Bureau,” a journalist and father of many brilliant thoughts, conceived the idea of making and booking engagements for lectures. His bureau revolutionized the lyceum and lecture field. It created a profession, and made the management of the work a business requiring skill and systematic care. Redpath was the friend of Phillips, Garrison, Sumner, Gough, Emerson, Whittier, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Anna Dickinson, and other patriotic platform heroes and heroines. Before that time our great lecturers were satisfied to receive from $50 to $100 a night and their expenses. Even John B. Gough never accepted a higher fee. When Charles Sumner was paid $500 for a lecture in Providence, such a fee was unprecedented. Even Wendell Phillips used to lecture for $25 or $50, and seemed to be willing to do so for that sum quite as readily as for $500 afterward. He wished the people to hear him, and he spoke for a cause. One morning Mr. Phillips came into our office in Boston to get his list of appointments. I said:

“Mr. Phillips, we have an open date. Springfield offers $250 for it. Natick wants it, but they can pay only $75.”

“What’s the population of the two towns?” asked Mr. Phillips.

We looked it up, and gave him the census report of each town.

“Natick offers more in proportion to its number of inhabitants than Springfield. Let Natick have it,” he said.

Mr. Redpath satisfied these lecturers that he could save them the trouble and annoyance of voluminous correspondence, and at the same time could obtain such fees as the lectures were worth, a suggestion which seemed to meet with general favor. By paying Redpath ten per cent. on all their business transactions they could be relieved of the care of bookings, and their income would not be diminished, to say the least. Redpath’s Bureau took charge of Mr. Gough’s business, and he cleared $40,000 for the season of 1871 and 1872, and during the last decade of his life his income was never less than $30,000, thus showing what could be done with experience and good management.

Mr. Redpath was the first manager to pay a lecturer a $1,000 fee. He paid it to Mr. Beecher for a lecture in Music Hall, Boston, in 1872. The gross receipts were over $3,000.

When the Redpath Bureau took Wendell Phillips’ business, he could easily get from $250 to $500 a night. There were several men who could command these figures. Men like Beecher, Chapin, Phillips, Sumner, Gough, and Emerson did not lecture merely for the money they made out of it. They put a good deal of love of their ideas, cause, or purposes into their work. There are men now who could make large incomes by lecturing if they would. There are almost daily calls for Seth Low, Chauncey M. Depew, Gen. Horace Porter, Bourke Cockran, and St. Clair McKelway, but they are not available.

Redpath would have been unsuccessful if he had depended upon himself for the management of the details of the business; but he was fortunate in associating with him his friend Mr. George Fall, a man of remarkable executive ability, who at once grasped the magnitude of the scheme and assumed the direction of the business details.

It was to be the Redpath Lyceum Bureau (Redpath & Fall, proprietors). Circulars were sent out over the country announcing the list of lectures to be secured. The newspapers talked about the plan, saying that every city, East and West, could have a lecture course of the best talent in the world by merely addressing the Redpath Lyceum Bureau. In the town in which I lived (Janesville, Wis.), John B. Gough and Anna Dickinson were secured. Each received $400 per night. Tickets sold at from $1 to $5, and the local lyceum cleared about $600, after paying all expenses. It was the same way all over the country. There was not a town which could not afford a great lecturer, but experience and ability were required to secure one.

About this time (1867-68) Petroleum V. Nasby was a great attraction and money-maker. Such a thing as losing money on a big lecture course seemed impossible. Carpenter & Sheldon, managers of the Star Course in Chicago, secured every lecturer and reader that the bureau had at its command, and they paid the highest prices. Their “Chicago Star Course” tickets invariably sold at a premium. Long before the date of the first lecture of the course there was not a ticket to be had. It was the same in Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Rochester, Pittsburg, Columbus, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. Everywhere the star course was the fad. One Sunday in Rochester I attended a Baptist Sunday-school. Two of the prizes for some specially meritorious object were tickets to the Athenæum Star Course, in Corinthian Hall, where the holders could hear John B. Gough, Mary A. Livermore, Mrs. Scott-Siddons, the Rev. George Dawson of England, and the Hon. William Parsons of Ireland, and Ann Eliza Young of Utah. The list of lecturers was printed on the ticket and read off by the superintendent.

T. B. Pugh’s Star Course in Philadelphia was considered a greater property than any theatre in that city. He gave an annual course of ten lectures and concerts, and sold every seat in the great Academy of Music, from orchestra to amphitheatre (all reserved), just as soon as the tickets could possibly be passed out to the waiting crowd. The prices ranged from $3 to $8. It was the same with Hathaway & Pond’s Star Course in Music Hall, Boston, and with the Franklin Lyceum in Providence; in fact, all the large cities looked to the star lecture courses for the highest class of entertainments, and they surely had them. Lyceum treasuries were full, the people were liberal in their patronage, and the public was satisfied. It was a marvellous intellectual movement, and that it no longer exists in this shape must be looked upon with sincere regret by those who watch the progress of the age.

The first hard blow that the lecture platform got was from the clear, humorous light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. People went to hear them who would not previously go to the theatre. To a large extent they took the place of the lecturers in New England, causing the public halls to be remodelled; and the curtain went up where previously it had been forbidden. The fun and the good music were popular, wholesome, and profitable; but when less gifted imitators sent out poor companies, not so clean, with poor music, there was a reaction, and the lecture-concert system began to regain some of its lost ground, and the poor trash of the show business had to go under.

During the years between 1871 and 1877 the lyceum flourished. It began to show weakness in 1874-75. There were not enough good lecturers. The war-horses of the platform were disappearing. Sumner died. Emerson was worn out. Curtis had assumed the editorship of _Harper’s Weekly_. Gough’s throat was thickening up, and it was an effort to listen to him. Douglass had gone as minister to Hayti. Henry Ward Beecher’s lecture engagements must bend to his church obligations at home. He was a preacher and the pastor of a church. Anna Dickinson got to scolding her audiences; besides, she had a craze for the stage. Mrs. Livermore could lecture only six nights a week. She had over eight hundred applications for a single season, more than she could accept, not only from lyceums, but from churches, colleges, temperance and women’s societies. About the same conditions obtained with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. There were over five hundred lyceums to be supplied. The great champions of woman’s right had said and told all that there was to say. Nast had abruptly stopped in the very zenith of his popularity. Spurgeon, Gladstone, and John Bright refused to consider fabulous offers inviting them to come to America. There must be something to make the courses attractive or they would go under. It was determined to augment them with music. I went to New York and arranged for a grand concert company to open the principal courses in the large cities. It had to be composed of the leading stars in the profession, and nothing but the very best would do. One season we paid Max Strakosch $10,000 for ten concerts to be given in the leading star courses in Boston, Portland, Providence, Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. That company consisted of Clara Louise Kellogg, Anna Louise Cary, George Conley, basso, Brignoli, tenor, Alfred Pease, pianist, George W. Colby, accompanist. We used one of these concerts for the star course in Boston. I ran one independently on Sunday night in the Boston theatre. They were sold to each of the other courses for $200 more than we paid Strakosch. It was the finest vocal quartette available in America, and I would like to see it “bested” now under conditions similar to those then existing.

Next came a great lyceum star, Ole Bull, the most popular violinist ever known. His name assured the success of almost any course where there was an auditorium of ample capacity. I paid him $500 a concert every time he played for me. The great Norwegian “fiddler,” as musicians called him, had not appeared in public for several years. It was almost accidental that I secured him. He was at the Parker House, Boston, on his way from his home in Norway to Madison, Wis., his American home. I met him in the elevator, and asked if he were not going to play in Boston. His wife, who was with him, replied that he would not play in Boston until he could receive $500 a concert. Boston had never appreciated him.

I was looking for a substitute for one of the attractions that had disappointed us for the star course in Boston, the date being the following Tuesday. I told Mr. Bull that our house was sold out, being in the star course, and that there was no way of making it possible for him to draw a great crowd on his merits. The audience, however, would be of more than average intelligence, and would be appreciative. I offered to give him $250 and all the money taken in at the door on the night of the concert. He accepted at once, saying that was fair enough. Mrs. Bull did not like it, and was persistent in insisting that her husband ought to have $500. We left the matter as Mr. Bull and I had agreed. They returned to New York that day (it was Friday). I announced in the papers that Ole Bull would play in the star course the Tuesday following. The next evening I got a note from the manager of Music Hall asking me to send around the tickets for the Ole Bull concert. He said that over four hundred applications had come in, and one especially, from Henry W. Longfellow, for six seats. What were we to do? There were four rows of seats under the back gallery that we had never put on sale, because no one could ever hear a speaker from that part of the hall. We concluded to number and sell those seats at $1.50 each. We also figured that we could put three hundred chairs on the stage, and four hundred “standees” wherever they could get in. On Sunday before the concert, Mr. and Mrs. Bull arrived in Boston. I called and found Mrs. Bull still determined that Mr. Bull must have $500. I did not tell her that under the present arrangement he would get twice that sum, but I gave her a check for $500, and took her receipt. The sale, in addition to the course tickets, was over $1,100. I afterward paid Ole Bull $25,000 for fifty concerts, and made a handsome profit.

Concerts and novelties were now called for in courses. In consequence, the call for lectures was much diminished. Gilmore’s band was a strong attraction for large cities, but too expensive for the average lyceum, so we made a feature for two seasons of Mme. Camilla Urso, the violinist, and a supporting company, which proved very profitable, not only to lyceums, but to the star. Adelaide Phillips, the popular contralto, was another great lyceum favorite, supported by Tom Karl, then the handsomest young tenor, and with the ladies the greatest favorite in the profession. It was found necessary that a new attraction for a feature of courses must be produced every season, and that feature music. Redpath had another thought--opera; English opera in lyceums, so “The Redpath English Opera Company” was organized with this original announcement:

“To meet a long-felt want in lyceums for an entertainment which would combine exquisite music and dramatic situations, to take the place of the miscellaneous concerts which have become almost as unpopular as readings,” etc.

This little company consisted of a quartette of young singers. They gave Flotow’s opera, “Martha,” complete, omitting the choruses. The orchestra was a piano only. They were beautiful singers. Miss Clara Nichols, soprano; Flora E. Barry, contralto; George H. Clark, tenor; Edward Payson, basso; John Howard, piano.

This was the most delightful hit of that season (1875-76). We could give a whole opera, without a chorus, for $250, and if necessary for much less. Every lyceum applied for it. In many places it could not be given, because the drop-curtain was the dividing line in classifying the character of the entertainment to be given in the public halls. In Worcester, Providence, Salem, Clinton, Natick, and suburban cities, where we could not use scenery, we produced the opera without. It gave great delight, and seemed to whet the appetite for richer feasts of real opera, and the advancement of the drama, which now so largely occupies the field of amusements. The bureau made about eighteen thousand dollars for that little opera company the first season it was out. It was the pioneer English opera company outside of the largest cities. In less than two years there were scores of English opera companies.

But the intellectual character of the lyceum entertainments has been gradually falling. There is seldom a lecture course nowadays that can get support from the general public as in former times. There will always be some one person more famous and universally popular than all the rest. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) is such a man. His books are in every home, and his name has been a household word for a generation, wherever the language is English. He could command a greater fee now than ever before in his life, but he says “No.”

Of those who are actively engaged in platform work, the one who to-day (1900-01) has reached the highest point of popularity--and that, too, by a sudden bound--is Ernest Seton-Thompson, the author of “Wild Animals I have Known.”

To be attractions, heroes must make the history they relate. There will never be another Stanley, unless Peary finds the North Pole. I doubt if there will be another George Kennan, who delivered two hundred lectures on two hundred consecutive secular nights, the season after his return from Siberia, and who is about as good a lecturer as we now have. Peary’s adventures have been the most hazardous and the most successful of any of our Arctic explorers. Here is Dr. Cook, the first man to set foot on the Antarctic continent. But his unique success does not create the excitement it merits. Times have so changed that it is impossible to bring this, one of the bravest of our young heroes, into public demand. Of late our people have had so much to read about and to talk about that even heroes are common.

In the palmy days of the lyceum great magazines were of limited circulation. Now their circulations are incalculable. The Sunday newspapers employ a hundred writers where they had one twenty years ago, and the facilities for the manufacture of printing paper have increased in proportion to the writers. The machinery for printing one thousand newspapers an hour was considered wonderful twenty-five years ago. Now a hundred thousand is expected to be printed in the same space of time, and all this paper contains almost everything to be said on the subjects of progress, genius, education, reform, and entertainment that was formerly the function of the lyceum.

Opera houses have taken the places of magnificent halls. The greatest actor has been knighted, thereby compelling recognition of the acted drama as a peer of all other arts; the minister’s family goes to the theatre while he attends his prayer meeting up-town, and then calls for his family on his way home, and sees the last act of the play. The theatre is attractive, and its prices are no higher than the prices of the best lecture, while the public halls receive so little patronage that it does not pay to make them inviting by keeping them in order.

Right here I quote from United States Senator Albert J. Beveridge’s article on public speaking, recently printed in the _Saturday Evening Post_, Philadelphia:

“What nonsense the repeated statement that public speaking has had its day, that the newspaper has taken its place, and all the rest of that kind of talk. Public speaking will never decline until men cease to have ears to hear. How hard it is to read a speech--how delightful to listen. Speaking is nature’s method of instruction. It begins with the mother to child; it continues with teacher to pupil; it continues still in lecturer or professor to his student (for the universities are all going back to the old oral method of instruction); and it still continues in all the forms of effective human communication.

“The newspapers are a marvellous influence, but they are not everything and they do not supply everything. For example, it is commonly supposed that they absolutely and exclusively mould and control public opinion. But they do not. When all has been said, the most powerful public opinion, after all, is that from mouth-to-mouth public opinion--that living, moving opinion which spreads from neighbor to neighbor, and has fused into it the vitality of the personality of nearly every man--yes, and woman, don’t forget that--in the whole community.”

The veteran theatrical manager, Mr. J. H. McVicker, was in my office about twelve years ago, and said to me: “Pond, have you any idea how many travelling operatic and theatrical combinations are on the road?” I replied that I had not, but possibly there might be fifty. “Well,” he said, “there are over eighty!” It surprised me. To-day there are probably fifteen hundred travelling shows going from town to town doing “one-night stands,” though most of them are making little or nothing.

In cities like New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, Holyoke, Lowell, Fitchburg, Salem, Fall River, and all over the country, theatres book time solid with these “combinations” from August to May. It is only through accident to some standard attraction or some disappointment that a big lecturer or concert company can find an open date. The best theatres will not risk losing a week for any good lecturer or concert company, consequently the lyceum attraction must secure a church, rink, armory, or some unfrequented barracks, or stay away. This overdoing of the “show business” has proved poor judgment on the part of local managers, with disastrous results to many of the combinations, and a loss of faith on the part of the public.

The men and women who have long been able to hold the public attention on questions outside such subjects as literature, historical themes, poetry, drama, exploration, adventure, science, or their own writings and personality, have been those who with eloquence and learning, or exceptional capacity and repute of some kind, have devoted themselves to a cause or question which, while it aroused public interest, did not at the time command access to the ordinary channels of discussion by the press partisan or other conventional procedure and methods. In fact, the lyceum and lecture platform, outside of its instruction and entertainment features, has always been more or less a field of propaganda. It illustrates the broadness of the American character that the people are willing to pay largely for the best presentation to them of causes and issues, even isms, which are held only by the minority. Intellectual curiosity, as well as an active sense of mental fairness, has a good deal to do with this fad. It is one that was more apparent thirty years since than it is to-day, yet it is still strong enough to be an important factor on the business side of the lecture management.

There is still a demand for good lecturers, as may be seen from the fact that I am regularly corresponding with some three thousand different persons associated with the management of lectures and platform entertainments, and at least sixty per cent. of them are women. Lecturers who interest people and do not offend the public taste (which I have always found to be very nearly a correct measurement also, apart from the rule of profit) can find constant occupation.

Clergymen are quite naturally among the successful lecturers. Of Americans, Dr. Hillis is now in the lead, Talmage next, and Gunsaulis next--the present triumvirate of American lecture kings. The Rev. Dr. John Watson (“Ian Maclaren”) is the best England has yet produced, and his popularity is still very great; and there are clerygmen of the Church of England that would be as successful as any yet imported if they would only accept the invitation to come. There is no other profession or occupation which has given more brilliant and scholarly minds to this division of the people’s university, the lecture platform, than the ministry.

Going back briefly to the decade preceding the Civil War, in which the early lyceum obtained its largest development, memory recalls most readily, as among formative and directing minds, both in civic and educational influence, the names of such preachers and teachers as Theodore Parker, Thomas Starr King, Henry Ward Beecher, his brother Edward, Edward Everett Hale, John Lord, Robert Collyer, Dr. Chapin, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dr. Vincent, Robert Laird Collier, and Bishop Simpson, among others who are also worthy of remembrance. The war period did not lessen the lyceum’s influence, but it vastly intensified the power of those who had become its leading lecturers and orators.

The church bodies and the associated religious societies which have grown from them have, from the earliest lyceum beginnings, been among its chief mainstays. During the culminating period of the slavery debate, the churches were, as a rule, conservative, and as such did not lend themselves heartily to either side of the great agitation. There were, as all know, many clergymen who did, and who, in so doing, were strong enough to carry their congregations with them. But at that date religious denominations were not lecture and platform builders. They are now. Nor were colleges and educational institutions then, in general, favorable to the secular teacher. Now the reverse is the case. The old star courses have mainly passed away. The dependence of the average and smaller lecture and entertainment courses to-day throughout the land, though largely arranged by individuals, may be found in the churches and colleges, or in the active bodies grouped around them. The Young Men’s Christian Associations, the Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, Women’s Clubs, and Societies of Sons and Daughters of the Revolution, with many literary and educational societies which pastors now so carefully foster, are active centres of support to systematic lecturing and entertainments throughout the United States, and the same is largely true also of Great Britain and Canada. The Australian colonies appear to depend more directly upon individual enterprise for such forms of mental catering as I am considering. One result of this condition is seen in the increased attention to personal character on the platform. The ethical need is marked by the social one. The old and enthusiastic agitating spirit has virtually departed. Instruction and amusement of a worthy character are more sought for. There is one result, however, in later days which is to be regretted, and that is in the very marked decrease of the scale of remuneration among the large number of small lyceum organizations that call for such service.

These two factors, the lessened interest in the discussion of disturbing public questions, and the decreased financial remuneration, have worked notable changes. What has taken the place of the aggressive spirit is a desire for an intelligent, broad, ethical insight on disputed issues. Controversial subjects are not popular. The platform teaching to-day must be imbued with the scientific spirit. Audiences want to know the why and wherefore of things set forth or brought before them. Lecturers are thrown back not only upon their eloquence of advocacy and sincerity of conviction, but upon comprehensive experiences and the thoroughness of knowledge. Lecturers do not succeed as pessimists merely. American audiences, if critical, are optimistic also. The merely grotesque, odd, or unusual, unless related to live interests, does not hold them long. All this is not due to indifference. It comes in reality from knowing more--at least more thoroughly--what they do assume to know.

After the Civil War and the era of strife that political reconstruction produced, there was a period of several years when even the soberest of lecture audiences desired far more to be amused than instructed. Yet live characters and strong brains that had learned, seen, and known the wider forces in the world’s activities, soon began again to have ample recognition. The men who tried to wrest the secrets of Polar seas from the grip of cosmic ice and snow; those who toiled under equatorial suns to win the unknown areas to the service of man; soldiers and sailors who dared all in supreme struggle for their several causes; all who had some genuine theme to offer, so that the minds of their hearers might grow, received an abounding welcome. The men of action are especially in demand. Thus there has grown again, slowly but surely, that new life of the platform that is now beginning to be more clearly seen and felt. Audiences are eager to hear those who tell of the great historical past, as well as of the living present. The platform compels illustration by voice and picture alike. But the mere pictorial lecture is losing popularity. Poets and novelists are drawn from personal retirement as never before. The humorists and wits are at the service of delighted thousands who listen just as they read, with enthusiasm guided by an increasing critical acumen. There is a healthy, gracious, normal loosening, too, of Puritan harness. The lyceum brings wholesome laughter and pleasure to vast audiences throughout the land. It is clean and human; it clears the brain while it cheers the heart. You cannot fit scandal to this platform, but you can make its audiences grow jolly and laugh with wholesome glee. There is no room for innuendo, and there is little of false modesty either.

Nearly a quarter of a century of work in supplying the demands of such bodies as gather about the lyceum and the platform has enabled me to judge clearly of a decided growth of keen intelligence and solid morality. The American lyceum entertainers are more than a popular match for the London music-hall artists or the Parisian chansonists. Excellent music is required, only good singers are the vogue, while those who read or give recitals must be of the best type. More than all do I find a steady growth on the ethical side of things. A man or a woman who, like Mrs. Booth, has a cause to present which appeals to human sympathy is sure of a hearing. But the public demands of even such a lecturer accurate information and wealth of illustration. Only a clear demonstration of the fitness of the appeal, with positive evidence of the due relation of the cause to common needs and daily requirements, will command continued attention. More than all these, there must be a looking forward to growth and upward to the sunlight. Such a speaker must believe as well as know, and must link his cause to the historical past as well as to the evolutionary future. The spirit of our lecture audiences demands inquiry with hope, knowledge with faith. An examination of themes and topics, as well as of names and capacity during my managerial experience, covering, as it does, so long a time, convinces me of the correctness of the cheering vein thus taken.

* * * * *

Concerning the business side of my life, I would like to say that the object of my work has never been simply to make money. If it had been money alone that I sought in my dealings with the talented people whose tours and business I have managed, I would very soon have found myself falling short of my ambition. A manager must be kind and liberal, and as far as he himself is concerned, the money consideration must be kept in the background. I have never desired to make great money. My object has been the approbation of those I served. I can say honestly that that has been the height of my ambition, and is at present as much as ever. That is why I am in love with my business, I suppose. I am thoroughly satisfied with the results, and would not exchange the friends that I have made for the wealth of many of our merchant princes.

INDEX

Abbott, “Honest Little Emma,” 166;
her success, 168

Abbott, Rev. Lyman, when I first met him--his love
for Mr. Beecher--Mr. Beecher’s appreciation
of his friend--his wonderful resources as a
preacher, writer, lecturer, editor, and
business manager, 77-83;
surprised religious world, 83, 84, 411, 412

Adams, Major, 49

Aide, Hamilton, 275

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 183

Allen, James Lane, 482, 508, 522

Allon, Rev. Dr. Henry, 65, 67, 116

Anderson, Finley, meets Stanley on _Teutonic_, 275

Anderson, Major Thomas, 47

Anthony, Susan B., 144-146, 539, 540

Arnold, Brother of Sir Edwin, 127

Arnold, Lady, 378

Arnold, Matthew, 116, 323-325, 487, 497

Arnold, Mrs., 378

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 375-404;
where educated, 375;
editor London _Telegraph_, 375;
Lotos Club speech, 385;
last appearance in America, 398;
visited him in London, 401;
last letters from him, 402-409, 497;
visits Walt Whitman, 498

Austen, Colonel, Brooklyn 13th, 58

Austin, George Lowell, on Phillips, 8

Bailey, Banks, and Biddell, 57

Balch, Reporter, 277

Barnaby, Frederick, War Correspondent, 291

Barnum, P. T., xxiv, 92, 94, 96;
as a lecturer, 350-354

Barr, Robert, 477, 481

Barry, Flora, 547

Barton, Clara, 141

Baxter, Rev. Dr., of London, 106, 107, 108

Beecher, Col. H. B., 313;
and family, 73

Beecher, Dr. Lyman, 39

Beecher, Henry Ward, Plymouth pulpit, 1;
on Depew, 17, 19;
Major Pond’s tribute to, 37-75;
when he came to Plymouth Church, 38;
doctrine of forgiveness, 38;
earliest recollection of the man, 39;
first lecture for me, 39;
in Nashville and Memphis, 40-42;
speech in Plymouth prayer meeting on the first visit South, 42-44;
last photograph taken of him, 41;
in Richmond, his first lecture South of Mason and Dixon’s line, 41;
his triumph in Richmond, 44-47;
in Davenport, Iowa--meeting former Brooklyn friends
on the cars--collecting of hairs on his
overcoat collar, 47-49;
in Topeka, Kans., meets former old servants, 48-50;
baptizes baby in Butte, Mont., 52;
in Bloomington, Ill., 54;
red-hot poker, 55;
marries C. P. Huntington, 65, 66;
Chaplain Brooklyn 13th Regiment, 58-60;
his Peekskill home and farm dairy, 61-62;
in England, 1863, 63-65;
last visit England, 1886, 64;
Friday evening meeting night before sailing, 64;
in Liverpool--hear Gladstone, 65;
first lecture in England, 65;
first sermon in London, 67;
addresses theological students in London, 68;
closes English tour in Dublin, 70-72;
arrives home from England, 72;
last days and death--entries in my diary, 72-74;
Dr. Abbott’s relations with him, 77-82, 84, 85, 86;
comparison with Parker, 87-112, 115;
first sermon in London, July 4, 116;
charged with preaching the Gospel for money, 116, 117, 153, 168, 210;
advised me to get Stanley, 257; 306, 357, 358, 366, 406,
427, 490, 492-494, 539, 544, 551;
dead, 74

Beecher, Mrs. Henry Ward, 55, 211, 313

Beecher, Rev. Dr. Edward, 551

Beecher, William C., 314

Bell, Alexander Graham, invents telephone, 466

Bellows, Henry W., 155

Benefit experience, 527

Berry, Rev. Charles, 79

Billings, Josh, his lecture, 185-187, 226

Black, Alexander, guilty of a new invention, 512

Blaine, Speaker James G., xxii, 21

Bonner, Robert Edwin, 384

Booth, Edwin, 309

Booth, Maud Ballington, 177

Boutwell, L. J., 164

Boutwell, Secretary of Treasury, 190

Bowers, Arthur F., 384

Bradley, Dean of Westminster, 67

Briggs, R. R., 202

Bright, John, on Beecher as an orator, 38

Brignoli, the great tenor, 544

Brooks, Arthur, 123, 126

Brooks, Phillips, 137

Brown, Col. Gratz, 190

Brown, George McL., 223

Brown, John, xx, 39, 535, 537, 538

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, 269

Buffington, Colonel, 425

Bull, Mrs. Ole, 555, 556

Bull, Ole, the violinist, 455, 456

Bunner, H. C., 382

Burt, Lieutenant-Colonel, 215

Byers, Major, 334

Cable, George W., 337, 340, 427, 486;
first appearance in Brooklyn, 491;
how I met him, 490, 527, 528;
visits Beecher’s church and hears him preach for the first time, 493;
letters on Beecher’s death, 494;
suggestions as to platform, 496

Caine, Hall, remarkable personality, 452;
his reading tour, 454;
lunch with Zangwill, 471

Cameron, J. A., 291

Cameron, John, 415

Campbell, Isaac, 415

Carleton, Henry Guy, 387

Carlyle, Thomas, 368

Carnegie, Andrew, 396-398, 428

Carpenter & Sheldon’s star course, 315

Carpenter, Bishop Boyd, of Ripon, 14, 130

Cary, Anna Louise, 143, 551

Cary, William, 485

Casati, with Emin in Africa, 279

Chapin, Rev. Dr., 539, 551

Charles, W. G., 218

Chase, W. G., 224

Childs, George W., 384, 389

Christie, Gerald, 170, 174

Churchill, Professor, of Andover, 539

Chute, G. Y.,

Clark, James Edward, _Christian World_, 116

Clarke, James Freeman, 147, 148

Clay, Henry, 13

Clemens, Miss Clara, 200, 207, 208, 214

Clemens, Mrs., 206, 213, 218, 219, 224

Clemens, S. L. (Mark Twain), 197;
a genius, 197;
how a lecture manager swindled him, 197;
General Grant and Mark great friends, 197;
a printer, 198;
Mark Twain becomes a lecturer, 198;
starts on tour around the world to pay his debts, 200;
diary of the tour across the continent, 200-220;
great crowd in Cleveland, 200;
on steamer, 199;
in Mackinac, 203;
Petosky, 204;
in Duluth, 205;
Minneapolis, 206;
St. Paul to Winnipeg, 206, 207;
Crookston, 207;
Great Falls, 209;
Butte, 210;
Anaconda, 210;
Helena, where old friend comes to settle old score, 212;
arrested at Fort Missoula, 213;
Spokane receivers everywhere, 215, 216;
Seattle, the “Flyer” to Tacoma, 217;
Portland and Olympia, 215, 216;
Tacoma Press Club, 219;
arrival in Vancouver--Mark ill, 221-223;
sails from Victoria, 224, 225;
as a letter writer, 226, 228, 229, 333, 427, 523, 547;
introduces Nye and Riley in Boston, 247, 248;
entertains Stanley and introduces him, 257

Cleveland, President Grover, 33, 431

Clifford, Rev. Dr., Westborn Park Chapel, 116

Cluff, David, of Provo, Utah, xxiii

Cockerell, Col. John, 527, 528

Cockran, W. Bourke, 506, 542

Colby, George W., 544

Cole, Dr. C. K., 213

Collis, Gen. H. C., 384

Collyer, Rev. Dr. Robert, 551

Conly, George, 544

Cook, Dr. Frederick A., Antarctic explorer, 293, 294

Cooper, J. Fenimore, 125

Corwin, Thomas, 166

Craigie, Mrs. (“John Oliver Hobbes”), 127

Crawford, F. Marion, xxiv, 148;
a man I love very much, 455;
how he travels and works, 455, 456;
his lecture tour, 457-459;
Dr. Abbott on his lecture, 457;
reception and lectures in Utah, 458;
in an earthquake, 460, 461;
letters to me from Italy, 485-489

Crickson, Rev. Dr., 434

Curtis, George William, 341, 381, 384, 390, 539

Cushman, Charlotte, 141, 309;
her career, 315-318, 539

Daly, Augustin, 309

Dana, Charles A., 279, 345

Dana, Paul, 384

Daniels, George H., of New York Central Railroad, 355, 356

Davis, J. Clark, 389

Davis, Jefferson, 538

Dawson, Rev. George, 118

De Freece, A. B., 389

Depew, Hon. Chauncey M., 17, 390, 394, 412, 542;
as an orator, 19, 21;
lecture before Twentieth Century Club in reply to John Fiske, 22;
introduced Matthew Arnold, 323

Dewey, Admiral, Stanley refers to, 287

Dickens, Charles, 123, 124

Dickens, Charles, Jr., 207

Dickinson, Anna E., xxii, 152, 540, 544

Dix, Rev. Morgan, rector Trinity Church, 123-126

Dodd, Frank H., 411

Donald, Rev. Dr., 137

Douglass, Frederick, 8;
tribute, 29, 30; 143, 539

Doyle, Dr. A. Conan, came to America, 503;
described, 503-505;
dined and speech at Lotos Club, 504;
in Boston, 507;
letter to _The Critic_, 508;
letter to Major Pond, 509

Drummond, Dr. William Henry, author of “De Habitant,” 519, 520

Eccentricities of Genius, 1

Eggleston, Edward, 508, 528, 529

Elderkin, John, 411

Eliot, President of Harvard College, 391

Ellingwood, T. J., stenographer, 491

Ellsworth, W. W., sketch of, 474;
as a lecturer, 474, 475

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 330, 539;
last lecture, 331, 386

Everett, Edward (mention), 329, 539

Explorers, travellers, and war correspondents, 262

Fall, George L., 33, 542

Farrar, Canon, 116, 120

Field, Mrs. James T., 434

Finley, John, President Knox College, 425

Finney, Charles G., Jr., xx

Finney, F. N., 420

Finney, President Charles G., of Oberlin College, 39, 420

Fisher, Professor, 410

Fiske, John, 19, 20

Florence, W. J., 309, 383, 394

Foss, Sam Walter, poem on Walt Whitman, 500

Foster, George F., 485

Foster, M., 160

Fox, John, Jr., 482, 522;
tribute, 523, 524

Frame, W. F., Scotch singing comedian, 175

Gage, Hon. Lyman J., 426, 482

Gardner, Mrs. Jack, 359

Garrison, William Lloyd, sketch, 13, 147, 226, 534