Eccentricities of Genius

Orators

Eccentricities of Genius

The Triumvirate of Lecture Kings

The great triumvirate of lecture kings consisted of Gough, Beecher, and Wendell Phillips. Other men for a season, and sometimes for a few years, were as popular as any of them, but it was a calcium-light popularity, whereas the popularity of the “Big Three” endured for their entire lives.

Phillips held his place the longest, beginning lyceum work about 1845, and continuing it to his death nearly forty years later. Gough was the most supremely popular—not the greatest of the three intellectually, but most level to the largest number of the plain people. Beecher came parallel with him and had a higher influence. His position during and after the Civil War reached the altitude of world influence. His command of the Plymouth pulpit was the most enormous mental leverage. Theodore Parker said of it as early as 1856, that its “sounding board was the Rocky Mountains”—the auditorium therefore was the continent. Beecher touched the hearts of men; Gough held to the fear of the effects of wrong-doing; Phillips, through the intellect, reached the conscience of his generation. He was a name in Great Britain, a power in the Northern States. Beecher was a power on both sides of the ocean, a person beloved on all sides. Who shall name other men who have filled the last half of the century with such enduring recognition?

JOHN B. GOUGH deserves the title of King of the Lecture World, if popularity be made the sole test, and only Mr. Beecher and Wendell Phillips had any claim to contest the title with him, if eloquence—the power to hold and charm audiences—be made the test.

Mr. Gough was a more popular lecturer for a longer term of years than any other favorite of the lyceums. He was a born orator, with great dramatic power. Men of greater culture but less natural ability used to be fond of attributing his success to the supposed fact that he was the “evangelical comedian,” that the unco’ good, whose religious prejudices would not suffer them to go to the theatre, found a substitute in listening to the comic stories and the dramatic delivery of Gough.

This theory does not suffice to explain the universal and long-continued popularity of this great orator. He never faced an audience that he did not capture and captivate; and not in the United States only, not in the North only, where his popularity never wavered, but in the South, where Yankees were not in favor, and in the Canadian Provinces, where they were disliked, and in every part of England, Scotland, and Ireland as well. He delighted not only all the intelligent audiences he addressed in these six nations—for during most of his career our North and our South were at heart two nations’ making with Canada three nations on our continent, and the three distinct nationalities on the British Islands making up the six—but he delighted all kinds and conditions of men. He was at his best before an educated audience in an evangelical community. But when he addressed a “mission” audience in North Street, Boston, or in the Five Points in New York, he charmed the gamin and the poorest classes who gathered there as much as he charmed the cultivated assemblages in Music Hall, Boston, then admitted to be the finest audiences that Boston and its suburbs could turn out.

Mr. Gough never asked a fee in his life. He left his remuneration to the public who employed him. It rose year after year, beginning with less than a dollar at times, until, when the bureau did his business for him, it reached from $200, the lowest fee, to $500 a night. In the last years of his life his income exceeded $30,000. He did more to promote the temperance cause than any man who ever lived. It is strange, but it is a fact, that although Gough never broke down in his life as an orator, and never failed to capture his audience, yet he always had a mild sort of stage-fright, which never went off until he began to speak.

To get time to master this fright was the reason why he always insisted on being “introduced” to his audiences before he spoke, and he so insisted even in places where the absurd custom had been abandoned for years. When the chairman was introducing him, Mr. Gough was “bracing up” to overcome his stage-fright. And let me say right here that the phrase “bracing up” has two meanings; that the slanderous statements often started against Mr. Gough, that he sometimes took a drink in secret, were wholly and wickedly untrue. In his autobiography Mr. Gough has told the true story of his fall, his conversion, and his one relapse, and he has told it truthfully. He was absolutely and always, after his first relapse, a total-abstinence man in creed and life. There never lived a truer man.

For forty years he held the reputation as first in the land as an orator and champion of temperance. He probably delivered more lectures than any man who has lived in the present age. From a carefully kept record we find that from 1842 to 1852 he lectured on an average of 300 times a year, making 3,000 lectures. From 1862 to 1870 he averaged 260 times a year, or 2,080 lectures on temperance. Of these, 1,160 were delivered in Great Britain. After 1870 Mr. Gough lectured on miscellaneous subjects. Each year he prepared a new lecture upon a fresh topic. Among the most taking were: “Eloquence and Orators,” “Peculiar People,” “Fact and Fiction,” “Habit,” “Curiosity,” “Circumstances,” “Will It Pay,” “Now and Then,” “Night Scenes,” “Blunders,” which was his last. From 1861 to the time of his death, February 11, 1886, he delivered 3,526 lectures, making in all 9,600 addresses before 9,000,000 hearers.

Mr. Gough was a charming man personally: modest, unassuming, kind-hearted, and sincere, always ready to help a worthy cause or a needy friend. He was a zealous Christian, but he never obtruded his religious belief offensively on others. One needed to see him in his home to know what a devoted Christian he was.

John B. Gough was among the heroes of the nineteenth century. The incalculable good he did to his fellow-men can never be known. It is no idle statement when we say that he was the direct means, under God, of raising tens of thousands from degradation to be law-abiding men and women. It was my privilege, in 1879, to see in Mr. Gough’s library four large books containing the names of over 140,000 men, women, and children who, by his own personal efforts, had been induced to sign the pledge.

It was the habit of John B. Gough, for forty years, to carry two overcoats on his lecture tours. After his lectures he put both of them on—the first, a light one, which he buttoned up tight, and the second, a very heavy one, a sort of combination of heavy ulster and the regulation overcoat.

His two-hour lecture was an unbroken succession of contortions and antics that left him dripping with perspiration. It required all this covering to protect his body from the air before he changed his wet clothing for dry.

On his return to his hotel, Mrs. Gough was always in waiting with fresh clothing. A valet at once set to work rubbing him down, exactly as is the custom of grooming a racehorse at the end of the heat. After this process he appeared apparently as fresh as ever. He would eat a bowl of bread and milk, and always wanted an old-fashioned bowl.

Mrs. Gough was his constant companion, but did not attend the lectures. During the last twelve years of their travel together she did not hear him once.

Gough was a man of the people, the son of a workingman and himself a workingman, self-educated but not what is technically called a scholar.

WENDELL PHILLIPS was the bluest of the blue blood of New England. His forefather came over in the Arabella, the vessel that followed the Mayflower, and there was a clergyman in every generation from the first immigrant to Phillips himself. They were always prominent people. Phillips studied for the law and there was a brilliant career open for him. When he was at college, he showed no sympathy with any radical movement. On the contrary, he was a member of an exclusive set known as The Gentlemen’s Club, and used to laugh at Sumner for taking Garrison’s Liberator. But he happened one day to attend a meeting in Faneuil Hall, and heard the Attorney General of the State vindicate the murderers of Lovejoy, in Illinois, and say that Lovejoy died as the fool dieth. Young Phillips sprang to his feet at once and delivered a short speech which placed him at the head of the orators of New England, a position he kept until he lay still in death. That incident made him an abolitionist for life. He abandoned all ideas of eminence in law or politics and determined to devote his whole life to the anti-slavery agitation.

He was the most polished and graceful orator our country ever produced. He spoke as quietly as if he were talking in his own parlor, and almost entirely without gestures, yet he had as great a power over all kinds of audiences as any American of whom we have any record. Often called before howling mobs, who had come to the lecture-room to prevent him from being heard, and who would shout and sing to drown his voice, he never failed to subdue them in a short time. These were occasions when even such men as Garrison and Theodore Parker were as powerless as children and were forced to retire. One illustration of his power and tact occurred in Boston. The majority of the audience was hostile. They yelled and sang and completely drowned his voice. The reporters were seated in a row just under the platform, in the place where the orchestra play in an ordinary theatre. Phillips made no attempt to address the howling audience, but bent over and seemed to be speaking in a low tone to the reporters. By and by the curiosity of the howling audience was excited: they ceased to clamor and tried to hear what he was saying to the reporters. Phillips looked at them and said quietly:

“Go on, gentlemen, go on. I do not need your ears. Through these pencils I speak to thirty millions of people.”

Not a voice was raised again. The mob had found its master and stayed whipped until he sat down.

He was open and sympathetic to all appeals and causes, and this made him accessible always to the poorest of men. I knew that in Boston among some of his most trusted intimates—men to whom he was always accessible—were workmen and laborers, who would hardly have been admitted at the kitchen doors of others of the “Brahmins” of that city.

George Lowell Austin, in his “Life and Times of Wendell Phillips,” says:

“Among all the noble men in Massachusetts who early came to the support of William Lloyd Garrison, in his war upon slavery, none came from a higher social plane, or parted with brighter prospects, or brought to the cause more brilliant abilities than did Wendell Phillips. He might have been congressman, governor, senator of the United States, and, possibly, have risen higher still, had he allied himself to either of the great political parties. In the Senate, had he reached that body, he would have ranked with Sumner and Conkling as an orator, and with Fessenden, Grimes, Douglas, and O. P. Morton as a debater.”

Eloquent as he was as a lecturer, he was far more effective as a debater. Debate was for him the flint and steel which brought out all his fire.

The memory of Mr. Phillips was something wonderful. He would listen to an elaborate speech for hours, and, without a single note of what had been said, in writing, reply to every part of it as fully and completely as if the speech were written out before him. Those who heard him only on the platform, and when not confronted by an opponent, have a very limited comprehension of his wonderful resources as a speaker.

In his style as a debater he resembled Sir Robert Peel, in grace and courtliness of manner and in fluency and copiousness of diction. He never hesitated for a word, or failed to employ the word best fitted to express his thought on the point under discussion.

The great agitator’s tact was only equalled by the serene humor and pleasant wit that he exhibited. An old friend has recently told me of Mr. Phillips questioning him as to the highest grade he had won in the Union army on the occasion of his going to the Federal capital just after muster-out, as a special correspondent. Mr. Phillips, knowing the young man’s radical views, had given him several letters of introduction and was writing one to Senator Sumner when he asked this question, remarking with a gentle laugh: “Yes, a title has its value with my friend Charles.” His unvarying urbanity was in conspicuous contrast with the Senator’s sometimes unpleasant surliness.

Mr. Phillips was decidedly old-fashioned in many of his ways. When at home, for example, he did his own marketing, and he knew how to buy. His chief purchases, however, were always in the way of dainties for his invalid wife. His own table habits were of the simplest. He was quite apt to answer his own door bell. On the entrance to that quiet Boston house there was no door-plate—only the name painted in large black letters—

PHILLIPS.

I called on him one morning at his house. He answered the bell himself. I remarked:

“Mr. Phillips, you have a very conspicuous sign on your door.”

He told me that as the door-plate had been torn off by vandals he had decided to have his name painted on the door so conspicuously that any one who wished to find his house could easily distinguish the name.

A large commercial block now occupies the ground where the house stood. On the corner of this modern building there is a bronze tablet bearing the following inscription:

HERE
WENDELL PHILLIPS RESIDED
DURING FORTY YEARS, DEVOTED BY HIM
TO EFFORTS TO SECURE THE ABOLITION OF
AFRICAN SLAVERY IN THIS COUNTRY.
THE CHARMS OF HOME, THE ENJOYMENT
OF WEALTH AND LEARNING, EVEN THE KINDLY
RECOGNITION OF HIS FELLOW-CITIZENS,
WERE BY HIM ACCOUNTED AS NAUGHT
COMPARED WITH DUTY.
HE LIVED TO SEE JUSTICE TRIUMPHANT,
FREEDOM UNIVERSAL, AND TO RECEIVE
THE TARDY PRAISES OF HIS FORMER
OPPONENTS.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE POOR, THE
FRIENDLESS, AND THE OPPRESSED ENRICHED HIM.
IN BOSTON HE WAS BORN 29 NOVEMBER, 1811, AND
DIED 2 FEBRUARY, 1884.
THIS TABLET WAS ERECTED IN 1894, BY ORDER OF
THE CITY COUNCIL OF BOSTON.

His benevolence was abounding. He inherited a fair fortune for those days, and he earned a great sum of money as a lecturer. Yet when he died there was nothing left—not even a debt. Mrs. Phillips, who did not long survive him, never knew this, for the friends about her arranged that the frugal household—and that it always was—should go on till the end.

Mr. Phillips was quite an adept with tools, keeping the household goods always in repair. At home, when not with Mrs. Phillips, he was always puttering with tools or engaged in reading and studying. He claimed that, as a boy, there was not an ordinary craft at which he had not done a good day’s work. His understanding of the building trades made him always at home with their workers.

Mr. Phillips was in demand wherever his services could be secured. He did not earn so much money lecturing as he might have made. He never allowed lecture committees to lose money if he knew it. In case of bad weather, or a disappointment of any kind to the persons who had failed to realize a profit on the large fee promised, he would invariably insist that he receive only an equitable portion of the profits. Seldom was there such an occasion, for his were the palmiest days of the lyceum.

Mr. Phillips’s repertoire was encyclopædic, embracing a vast list: travel, science, current politics, reform, labor, anti-slavery, education, legal topics, foreign matters, biography, and religion. Some of his titles were: “Street Life in Europe,” “The Lost Arts,” “The Times, or a Lesson of the Hour,” “Temperance,” “Woman,” “The Indians, or in Early Days,” “Agitation,” “Training,” “Law and Lawyers,” “Courts and Jails,” “The Irish Question,” “O’Connell,” “Sumner,” and “Christianity a Battle, not a Dream.”

No speaker of his day ever treated a greater variety of topics, nor with more even excellence, than Wendell Phillips. I quote from some of his letters illustrating an experience while on a long Western lecture tour. From Illinois he writes in a car with a lead pencil: “The weather is dull; only two days since I left that I have seen the sun. Rain, snow, clouds, damp, mud, and grim heavens. Still, the audiences are large.” From, one of the oil towns in Pennsylvania: “Here I am in an oil town, mud over the hubs of the wheels; literally, one horse was smothered in it; the queerest crowd of men, with trousers tucked in their boots; no privacy—hotels all one crowd—chambers mere thoroughfares, everybody passing through at will, and here I must stay until Sunday. I find some of the Boston people here. Everybody here is making money—the first place I have found where this is the case. Explanation—they have all struck oil.”

Again he writes from an Iowa town: “It has been extremely cold. I have been in the smaller towns and have had poor hotels and a generally hard time, rushed from one train to another, and puffed from station to station. In eleven days I have slept in a regular bed but four nights, still I have been fortunate in filling every engagement, and Sumner has been the favorite subject.

“In Milwaukee, I was at the ‘Plankington,’ where I had a fine suite of rooms, bath, chamber, parlor with pier glass ten feet high and five feet broad—nothing showy—just comfortable.”

Another time from Davenport, Iowa, to Redpath, his former abolitionist friend, as well as manager: “I, the traveller, the ‘elderly gentleman,’ have been—kissed! in Illinois! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, if you can without choking your envious soul. Yes, kissed!! on a public platform, in front of a depot, the whole world envying me. ‘Who did it?’ do you ask? It was an old man of seventy-three years—a veteran abolitionist, a lovely old saint. In the early days of the cause we used to kiss each other like the early Christians, and when he saw me he resumed the habit.”

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.—Now that Phillips and Garrison and the era in which they flourished have passed into history, it is common for writers who treat on that period to talk of these two champions of freedom as if they were equals, or of Phillips, even, as if he were Garrison’s inferior.

Those who knew both men smile at such absurdities.

Phillips and Garrison were equals in one respect only—in moral courage and unselfish devotion to the slave. Garrison was a commonplace man in respect to intellectual ability, whereas Phillips was a man of genius of the rarest culture. Garrison was a strong platform speaker. Phillips was one of the greatest orators of the century. Only three men of his time could contest the palm of eloquence with him—Webster, Clay, and Beecher.

There never was a more benevolent face than William Lloyd Garrison’s. He had a kindly eye, a winning smile, a gentleness of way, a crisp, straightforward way of talking, and a merciless movement in straight lines of thought.

Mr. Garrison visited England after the war was over and the emancipation of the slaves was accomplished, and received unusual courtesies. At a dinner given him by the British Anti-Slavery Society he was presented with a gold watch. As he took it in his hand he said:

“Well, gentlemen, if this had been a rotten egg I should have known what to do with it, but as it is a gold watch, I have nothing to say.”

CHARLES SUMNER was an aristocrat. He was my father’s ideal. After I had got back from Kansas and visited my father’s home in Wisconsin, father said to me: “James, the Honorable Charles Sumner is going to speak at R——. We must hear him.”

So we arranged to go. We walked nine miles to hear him speak. My father never spoke of him without giving him his title. He had enjoyed that speech intensely. I do not know whether I did or not. Father occupied a front seat with the intention of rushing up to the platform and greeting him by the hand when he was finished, but the Honorable Charles was too quick for him. He disappeared, got to his hotel, and nobody saw him.

Father said: “James, the Honorable Charles Sumner is going to Milwaukee to-morrow morning, and we can ride with him a part of the way.”

We were on the train early the next morning, and so was the Honorable Charles Sumner. He was sitting reading in the drawing-room car.

Father stepped up and said: “The Honorable Charles Sumner? I have read all of your speeches. I feel that it is the duty of every American to take you by the hand. This is my son. He has just returned from the Kansas conflict.”

Honorable Charles Sumner did not see father nor his son, but he saw the porter and said: “Can you get me a place where I will be undisturbed?”

Poor father! His heart was almost broken. During his last twenty-five years he never referred to the Honorable Charles Sumner. Sumner was in greater demand as a lecturer than any other man of his time just about those years.

When at the height of his fame, he lectured in Providence and, at the close, the committee gave him a check for $500, expecting that he would hand it back, as it was at that time such an unprecedented fee. But Mr. Sumner put the check into his pocket.

His price with the bureau was $300 to $500. There was never any difficulty in getting it.

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW I regard as the peerless all-round orator of the present time. I have listened to him on all sorts of occasions for the past twenty-five years, and I am bound to say that I have never known a more versatile public speaker. I have heard many jocose references to Chauncey’s chestnuts, and have been chestnut hunting whenever I could get into the field where he was, with poor pickings—at public dinners, college commencements, Press Club gatherings, alumni associations, mechanics’ associations, workingmen’s societies, and political campaigns—and must say that without exception he deviates from the line in which he is expected to talk less than anybody I have ever known excepting Beecher.

I remember a dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Delmonico’s early in the ’80’s, where Mr. Beecher and Mr. Depew were the principal speakers. It was a large gathering of the representative Irish-Americans, and there were present quite a number of distinguished foreigners. While Mr. Beecher was speaking, Mr. Depew came over and sat by me, and on one or two occasions intimated that it was one of the most remarkable orations he had ever listened to. After Mr. Beecher had finished, Mr. Depew was called upon, and Mr. Beecher came over and occupied the chair that Mr. Depew had vacated. There was tremendous applause when “Our Chauncey” was called upon. After quiet had been restored, Mr. Depew assumed a very serious expression. In opening his address he told his hearers that he had something serious to say to them: that we were on the eve of a great crisis—great labor strikes—and that he stood there as the representative of the largest labor constituency in America, and he told those men that he should hold them in a certain degree responsible for what might happen. He wanted them to distinctly understand that he and those he represented were prepared to meet this crisis. It was a long, earnest speech. There was not much applause until after Mr. Depew had finished.

Mr. Beecher and I left immediately afterward, drove in a carriage to Dorlon’s Oyster House, in Fulton Market, as was his usual custom after a New York speech, where we had supper. During our ride from Delmonico’s to Fulton Ferry Mr. Beecher did not speak. He was very quiet until supper was served. I remember the first words that came from his lips were something like this:

“The people of New York and of this country generally have looked upon Chauncey M. Depew as a sort of an entertainer and comedian for public occasions, and don’t realize the greatness of the man.” Then, after referring to the many responsibilities and trusts which were under Mr. Depew’s guidance, he wound up by saying, “Chauncey M. Depew is a great man, and I would like to vote for him for president of the United States.”

Of course Mr. Depew is not a lyceum lecturer, but he might be the most successful in America. He never will accept a fee for lecturing, and consequently the manager has little use for him in a business way.

I met him in his office November 27, 1899, and asked him if he could tell me of any incident in his speech-making career that had not been published. He told me that he thought the best speech he ever made in his life had never got into print, and he related the incident:

He and General Grant both had cottages at Long Branch. The General had taken offence at something that Mr. Depew had said in a speech, and for a long time they had passed each other without speaking. This silence lasted about four years. One day he received a letter from Judge Daly urging him to speak at the Sons of St. Patrick’s dinner at Delmonico’s, saying that General Grant was to be there and would speak. At that time General Grant had never made a public speech. “I took pains,” said Mr. Depew, “to prepare a speech for that occasion, although the time was very short and I had a case in the Supreme Court and was obliged to come from Washington on a late train which reached New York at nine o’clock. I hurried into my evening dress and to the dining hall, where I arrived about ten o’clock. General Grant was speaking. He discovered me as I was twisting myself through the crowd to the guest table. Grant stopped speaking (he told me afterward that his knees were knocking together under the table). As I arrived at my seat I heard the general say, ‘Oh! if I could only stand in Depew’s shoes!’ and he sat down. As I was called upon, I threw away my prepared speech and replied, ‘Who could stand in Grant’s shoes?’ and then all of Grant’s achievements multiplied before me and I believe I made the best speech of my life. It never got reported. After I sat down I felt some one take hold of my hand. I looked around; it was General Grant. He whispered to me, ‘That was the greatest speech that ever fell from human lips.’ Grant insisted on driving me home in his carriage that night, and we were close friends ever afterward.”

“Mr. Depew, who are our greatest orators?” I asked. “Compared with a quarter of a century ago we have no great orators, have we?”

“No, we have not,” said Mr. Depew. “I know one very eloquent man, with a big resounding voice, who holds his audience spell-bound, but what does he say? It is dull reading the next day.” He told me that Phillips and Beecher were the two greatest orators of their time, and that he thought they must have surpassed Webster and Clay.

I told Mr. Depew that when I was in England in 1886, I heard his name mentioned more among the religious classes than any American preacher in the country excepting Mr. Beecher.

He said, “You mean my reply to John Fiske at the Twentieth Century Club?”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s the speech. It was circulated as a religious tract in Great Britain.”

“Yes,” he replied, “I am told that millions of them have been circulated. I never considered that much of a speech. It was more an outburst of my heart at the time.”

With Mr. Depew’s permission I submit the speech, which, with the exception of “In His Steps,” has had the greatest circulation in England of any religious document ever published:

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH: A REPLY TO JOHN FISKE.

“I am a practical man, overwhelmed with the cares of business. It is exceedingly difficult for me to get on the plane of philosophic thought. I am a practical man. I believe in the Old Testament and the New Testament precisely as they are presented by Christianity. I am in antagonism to Mr. Wakeman, who dismisses the Bible as entirely a mass of legend, and with Professor Fiske, who accepts it with an interpretation entirely his own.

“It was the atheism of France that taught license for liberty and led to the French Revolution. Where are those old philosophies and the old philosophers? They are dead, while Christianity survives. The school of atheism led to despair. Materialism soon found that every violation of the moral law could go on consistently with its teachings. So pantheism and positivism have followed, only to be destroyed, and now we have the school of humanity and the cosmic philosophy coming close to the borders of Christianity as expounded by John Fiske.

“They tell us there is no more Creator, only a cosmic dust. Who made the dust? There is only protoplasm, indeed. Who made the protoplasm? They tell us of evolution from dust to monkey and then to man; but all the scientists have never found the missing link. The simple gospel of the humble son of a carpenter, preached by twelve fishermen, has survived the centuries and outlives all other philosophies of eighteen hundred years.

“I am not versed in the terminology of the philosophies. I believe them to be of little use to reach the hearts and to influence the actions of simple men. There is no liberty that lasts in the world, and there is no government which has liberty in it which lasts, that does not recognize the Bible. What is the object of all theology? It is to reach the human heart and to control the actions of men as they are.

“How many of us can even understand what the philosopher says? You might take the whole Stock Exchange and read Kant to them, and it would be utterly incomprehensible to them. Not so with the teachings of the Golden Rule. They could understand at least what that means. I read Mr. Wakeman’s pamphlet last night. They tell us God must disappear; that prayer is begging; that the Holy Communion is cannibalism. When did such a religion send out a missionary? When you show me a colony of ten thousand people who have come to live decently by its teachings, I may believe it. But I say now that the Christian faith of my mother is good enough for me. If we believe this faith, what harm? If we disbelieve it, and thereby do wrong, what of our future?”

GEN. HORACE PORTER, previous to his accepting the appointment of ambassador to France, has, next to Chauncey M. Depew, received the most applications to deliver orations, make after-dinner speeches, and to lecture. Probably he has received every year thousands more of such applications than he could possibly accept. If he were not a rich man and had no other means of earning money he could, by lecturing, very soon make a fortune probably greater than any other public man in our country could make in the same way.

His inimitable humor, the keenness of his satire, the blandness of his voice, his matchless mastery of himself and his theme, and his love of principle, make him the peerless champion of every worthy cause not only in the community where he lives, but throughout all this land of ours.

He is very popular with the soldiers, having been at one time chief of staff of the late General Grant. I have never known a man whose speeches are so fruitful of genuine fun. During the last two years that he was commander of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of New York, General Porter secured for the social gatherings of the Legion some of the best and ablest orators and public speakers that could be had, but invariably and unconsciously, with his irresistible introductions or opening addresses, he took the wind out of the sails of nearly every one who followed him. I should not care a pin to present a star for an opening speech before a metropolitan audience where General Porter was in order to precede him.

General Porter and Dr. Depew are alike fluent on all sorts of occasions, and to hear these two after-dinner orators at a banquet on any great occasion is to listen to an intellectual display not to be equalled by any other two men living. No better idea of General Porter’s inimitable manner could possibly be conveyed than to quote from the last speech he made in America at a dinner given him by the Lotus Club in New York, January 10, 1897, the evening before he took his departure for France. He said:

“When I was informed that this club was about to tender me a dinner, although the news was broken to me gently and deliberately, I was seized with a hypnotic intensity of memory which took on the form of neuralgia of the emotions. (Laughter.) But I determined to brace up and come here to-night, whether the ceremonies were of the nature of an ovation or a wake (renewed laughter), for I realized, if ever a man realized, that not to be dined by the Lotus Club would cause in life the feeling of failure and regret. Last night I could think only of what would occur in twenty-four hours after then. I tried to sleep, but that gentle solace did not visit my eyelids. I found myself murmuring over and over again the words: ‘Wake me early, mother dear, for I’m to be queen of the May.’ (Laughter.)

“There is sometimes a doubt as to whether there is more satisfaction from a dinner in the realization or in the anticipation. Some think it is better not to give a man a dinner, and then have people going about saying, ‘Why don’t they give him a dinner?’ than to give a dinner and have people say of him, ‘Why did they give that man a dinner?’ (Laughter.) But having tasted the enjoyments thus far this evening, I shall always in the future cast my vote in favor of realization.

“So far you have made things easy for me, but my experience has been somewhat like that of a man whom I met in Texas. I got into conversation with him, and he remarked to me: ‘I have struck a big thing.’ I asked him in what manner he had struck this big thing, and he replied: ‘I was sent down here by a religious organization to distribute tracts, and every time I gave a man a tract in Texas he invariably hauled out a gun from one pocket and a bottle of whiskey from another, and, handing me the bottle, he said: “Say, drink some of this, and drink it p—— d—— q——, or my gun will go off!” I have not had to pay for my liquor in this State since I have been distributing tracts.’ (Laughter.)

“Your president, in speaking of me to-night, has filled me full with his encomiums. The only fear I have is that I cannot get away with them all; I fear that some of them may leak out in somewhat the same style as Mark Twain experienced at Niagara Falls. During a visit to the Falls, Mark Twain has stated that while walking under the cataract he became scared and called out to the guide, and in so doing took in about three-quarters of the Falls. Speaking of this afterward, he remarked: ‘It was an anxious and perilous moment for me, because I knew if I sprung a leak I should be lost.’

“There is one thing I am glad of to-night, and that is that you have not announced the guests in the formal style they adopt in London. On one occasion when I was there, I attended a reception which was being held in a gentleman’s house, and there was a flunky in plush livery, a Home Ruler from the neighboring island. Among the guests who arrived while I was at that reception were General Badeau, General Grant, and Colonel McCook. The flunky, throwing open the door, announced them thus: ‘Banjo, General Drunk, and the Colonel’s Cook.’

“But you have not given me a toast. In the absence of a toast, it seems to me that there is nothing to speak of but this club and myself, which reminds me of a talk that took place between Johnson and Boswell. At the end of a long conversation between these two men, Johnson remarked: ‘You seem to have nothing to talk about except yourself and me, and I am sick of both.’ (Laughter.) You will probably have observed that I have a cold in my throat. But it is not a campaign cold. It is like one that a man had whom I met in Arkansas, who had a sore throat, and who, when his wife asked him how he got it, said it was due to a sudden change. He had been eating flannel cakes, and suddenly changed to buckwheat. Probably the easiest thing for me to have given you to-night was one of my campaign speeches, a little altered, so as to bring it up to date. That would have reminded you of the story of the Scotchman who was riding on the railroad from Perth to Inverness, and who was chewing his ticket in his mouth. A friend who was with him said: ‘You are very extravagant to be chewing up a ticket that cost twelve shillings and sixpence.’

“‘Nay, mon,’ he replied, ‘it is a limited ticket, and I am only sucking off the date.’ (Laughter.)

“What I like about the Lotus Club is the good fellowship that pervades here. Here the moose-hunter of the North meets the alligator-hunter of the South, and the man who goes tobogganing in the North meets the man who goes coon-hunting in the South. We have dined here great statesmen, authors, soldiers, divines, scientists, and men of art, recognizing equally all branches of art, knowing that all those branches are children of the same God. Men of learned professions, great leaders in business affairs, have been dined here, and many sojourners of other countries have been sent on their way rejoicing. The welcome you have given to me in this club and the fellowship extended to me have touched my heart to its innermost depths.

“And I want to express my deepest sense of gratitude and appreciation. But, alas! my lips can coin no phrases which can repay to you the debt of gratitude I owe to every one here. I shall carry the recollection of this club as one of the pleasantest of my remembrances as long as life shall last, and when life is approaching its end I know I shall, for one, indulge in those reveries which are the glorious twilight of the soul. And, sitting by the hearth fire, I shall watch the droppings of the grains of sand in the great hour-glass and count the beads of memory. And I shall see reflected in the flames of the yule-log the faces passing in review before me of all whom I have met in this club. It will recall to mind all those with whom I have communed here, heart to heart and soul to soul. Some of them may have been buried under distant sods, some may have found graves in the depths of the ocean, and there are others who may not yet have joined the vast army of the dead, but all their faces will pass, as I have said, in review before me, and I know I will find myself whispering: ‘Such faces were always the most precious to me.’” (Prolonged applause.)

COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL was without doubt one of the greatest popular orators of the age. He never received the full credit due to his great success as an orator during his lifetime, as his vehement assaults on the Christian religion aroused so many and such powerful enmities. But without regarding his creed, judging him solely by his power as an orator, no nation can to-day produce his equal. There was poetry, wit, humor, sarcasm, and tenderest pathos in nearly every lecture he delivered, whether on religion or politics.

Colonel Ingersoll was not invited by the lyceums to lecture in their regular courses, but his fame was so great that he did not need their aid in getting audiences. Whenever he wanted to lecture he sent out an agent, “hired a hall,” and lectured at his own risk, and, almost always, when in large cities, to his own pecuniary benefit. In the smaller towns the church influence was always too much for him, and it did not pay him to lecture in such places.

While coming from New England one day with Mr. Beecher, Colonel Ingersoll was in the same car. After a pleasant salutation between the two, the Colonel went to his seat. In his mischievous way Mr. Beecher said, “I have written that man’s epitaph.” He showed me written on the margin of a newspaper, with his pencil, two words: “Robert Burns.”

FREDERICK DOUGLASS for two or three decades was one of the favorites of the lyceum, which he abandoned only after the emancipation of his race. Douglass was beyond all comparison the ablest man whom the black race ever produced in our country, either among the pure black or the class of mixed blood. He himself was a mulatto. His father was pure white of a distinguished Maryland family. His mother was pure black and his father’s slave—that is, his mother was a pure black and his father a pure—I should say impure—white. He always gave his mother the credit of his talents. Douglass was born a slave. In early manhood he managed to escape on a ship, and landed in New Bedford, Mass. There he soon learned to read, and worked at such work as he could find. By and by he attended anti-slavery meetings, and soon became a popular speaker and the pet of the abolitionists. His graphic accounts of his life as a slave were very popular.

From giving the story of his life, he gradually branched out into discussions of the political questions of the day, and, next to Phillips, was probably the ablest orator of the anti-slavery movement. Eventually he went to Rochester and published, for many years, a weekly antislavery paper. Its title was Frederick Douglass’s Paper, which, next to Garrison’s Liberator and The Anti-Slavery Standard, was recognized as the ablest anti-slavery paper in America. Then he became a lecturer, and his fame spread so rapidly that he took rank in the favor of the lecture-going public with Phillips and the other leading lights of the lyceum. When Lincoln came into power, Douglass moved to Washington, and was appointed to office in the District of Columbia as Marshal, a position he held during the entire period of Lincoln’s administration.

Douglass’s first wife was a plantation negress without any education. A few years ago he married again. His second wife was white, and a woman of education and ability. The black race has developed under freedom many effective speakers, but Douglass was the only man among them who deserved to be regarded as a real orator. Most of the negro speakers were really benefited in public esteem on account of their color—that is, they could not have had as good a reputation as they won if they had been white, for their audiences made excuses for them that they would not have made for a white man. But Douglass was retarded by his color, for he would have won a higher rank if he had been a white man.

After hearing Douglass and Anna Dickinson speak at the first Southern Loyalist Convention at Philadelphia, John Minor Botts, the famous Virginian political leader, said:

“To-day I have heard the greatest white woman and the greatest colored orator in America. I tell you, sir, if Douglass had been a white man he would have been regarded as one of the greatest men in America.”

“Well, sir,” was the reply of his Northern listener, “we regard him as one of the greatest men in our country, even though he is a colored man.”

In Janesville, Wis., Sol Hudson, proprietor of the American House, would not allow Douglass in the dining-room. The Water Witch Engine Co., under whose auspices Douglass had been engaged to lecture, got out a hose cart and engine and were going to wash out the place. Mr. Douglass came out on the porch and said:

“Go back. Don’t blame the man. He is not to blame.”

He made a plea there that put us all to shame.

After accepting office, Douglass virtually retired from the lecture field, and whenever he appeared in public made Republican speeches.

Mr. Douglass died in Washington, December 10, 1895.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON is another great black man who has developed under freedom. He is principal and founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Tuskegee, Ala., in the Black Belt, where the colored people outnumber the white three to one.

Mr. Washington, in his speech at the opening of the Atlanta Exposition, September 18, 1895, it is believed by many, solved the race problem. His address was one of the most notable speeches both as to character and the warmth of its reception ever delivered to a Southern audience, and was favorably commented on editorially by every newspaper in the South. Born a slave, he occupies a place among the foremost men of the age.

At the Home Missionary Meeting of the Presbyterians in Carnegie Hall, New York, March 3, 1896, where President Cleveland presided, and where many of the greatest preachers and pulpit orators took part, this modest, unassuming negro of the South was the lion of the evening, next to the President. He was a revelation to the people of the North. He has fire and magnetism and gifts of oratory which few of our Northern orators possess, whether they be black or white. He speaks with force and conviction and leaves an indelible impression on the minds of his hearers.

The President’s visit to Tuskegee on Friday, November 16, 1898, was as delightful an occasion as any of the numerous events in Atlanta. Its significance is perceived by all, but it was emphasized when Secretary Long, in an impromptu speech in the school chapel, called attention to the striking spectacle presented by “the trinity seated on the platform, the notable conjunction in that State, of its Governor, the President of the nation, and Booker T. Washington seated together.”

It is not too much to say that one of the chief objects of President McKinley’s tour in the South on that occasion was the visit which he made to the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institution.

The President made there the longest speech of the tour.

He and his party were met at the station by the mayor and town council of Tuskegee and the trustees of the school, and were driven through the town to the school.

A few minutes were spent in driving over the grounds, after which the party, from a grand stand, viewed a general exhibition of school work on floats, carried on wagons.

All the visitors to Tuskegee went away with the memory of a few hours wholly bright with simple, cordial welcome and the evidences that long strides in the right direction toward the solution of the negro problem have been taken here.

At the opening meeting in the chapel of the institution were crowded together the students of the school, the negroes of the vicinity, the white people of the town, and members of the Georgia legislature.

Mr. Washington, in a short speech which he made before asking Governor Johnston to introduce the President, said:

“In the presence of the chief magistrate of the nation, I am glad to testify that in our efforts to teach our people to put brains and skill and dignity into the common occupations of life, we have not only the active help of all classes of citizens in the little town of Tuskegee, but of the best people of the South. Said our present Governor, in his recent message to the legislature: ‘Every dollar given to the cause of education becomes invested capital that cannot be lost or destroyed, but will continue to pay dividends from one generation to another.’ These are the words, this is the spirit, that governs the actions of the present Governor of Alabama, and I am sure that no one can more fitly welcome our distinguished guest to the State than Governor Johnston.”

Mr. Washington is a star lyceum lecturer when he can afford the time, but he devotes nearly his entire time and gives all his earnings to the institute, and is able through his persuasive powers to secure from rich contributors far more money than the largest pay audiences would yield. Still, many of our first-class lecture courses are able to secure him, and invariably with handsome profit.