“Why Don’t I Lecture?”
The true reason is, that I’ve nothing to say, and no ambition to say it. But as nobody ever gives the true reason for anything, why should I? Well, then, it is owing to several other becauses. In the first place, never being able to learn the multiplication table, how can I study Time tables? How could I find out, without getting the headache, how long it would take me to travel from Pumpkinville to Turnipville? How could I tell whether it would rain or shine that day? and not knowing this, how could I tell what to wear? As to what a woman lectures about, that is a minor consideration; but as to what she wears, ask the reporters if that does not constitute the staple of their newspaper accounts of her public appearance. Then I am afraid of “committees.” Committees are composed of men. If I arrived late, and the expectant audience were just on the point of exploding, I couldn’t ask the committee how my “back hair” looked. You see at once the difficulty of the thing, also its importance, because they would be the fellows that would have to look at my back hair from a plat-form view, you see. Well, then, again, I couldn’t lecture because I can’t breathe without fresh air; and that is a luxury that is always denied to lecturers. They’ll applaud him, and they’ll ask him “what he’ll drink,” and they’ll take him to execution in a carriage, and take his corpse back in a carriage, but they won’t let him breathe, at least till they’ve done with him, and I shouldn’t long survive such politeness. Then the stereotyped pitcher of water would close my lips instead of helping to open them. I hate a pitcher of water. I got a boxed ear for saying that once; but I’ve got two ears, that’s a comfort, so I’ll say it again. Then, I couldn’t lecture because I should feel cold shivers down my back, when that awful chairman rose and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you the speaker for this evening, Fanny Fern.” I hate that. I should want to hop up and speak when I got ready—say—while the lovers in the audience were whispering to each other, and the old ladies settling where to put their “umberils,” and the old gentlemen hunting their pockets for their “spettacles” which they had left at home, and the old maids trying to find a seat where “a horrid man” wasn’t too near. I’d like to pounce on them, like a cat, just then, and give my first scratch and draw blood; and then they’d let me go on my own way; because, you see, I am one of those persons who can’t do anything “to order.” I often see in the papers advertisements of “shirts made—to order,” but I never yet saw an advertisement of a corresponding female garment made that way. Did you? Well, that’s a hint that females shouldn’t be hampered by stupid rules and precedents. But this is a digression.
Again, I couldn’t lecture because I can’t bear saleratus, and I suppose all my engagements wouldn’t be in cities. Then, nextly, I couldn’t lecture, because, after the lecture was over, I should be “dead beat;” and that is just the time everybody would hurry into the committee-room to tell me that I was; and to use a dozen dictionaries, to advise “me not to talk,” but to go right straight home and go to bed as soon—as they had got through talking with me!
Lastly, the reason I can’t lecture is because I am the wife of a lecturer. He likes it; but two of that trade in one family is more than human nature can stagger under. It is enough for me to see him come home white about the gills, with a muddy valise, and a mousey horror of a travelling blanket, that I always air the first thing, and with an insane desire to indulge in a Rip Van Winkle nap, and dodge his kind. Now I hope, in conclusion, it is sufficiently clear to you that I have no call on the platform. My “sphere is home.” I trust Dr. Holland will make a note of this. “My sphere is home,” especially when I’m asked to do anything outside of it that I don’t want to do!