keeping men in heart, keeping men in happiness, keeping men ir use! But universal hirelingism is quite inevitable at present, when the governments and institutions most admired may be defined as Organized Distrusts. When we are better, and truer, and wiser, we shall labor together on very different terms than are known to Wayland's Political Economy. Till then, we must live in pitiful estrangement from one another, and strive in sorry competition for triumphs which bless not when they are gained. The experiment of association in the office of the Tribune, has, to all appearance, worked well. The paper has improved steadily and rapidly. It has lost none of its independence, none of its vivacity, and has gained in weight, wisdom, and influence. A vast amount of work of various kinds is done in the office, but it is done harmoniously and easily. And of all the proprietors, there is not one, whether he be editor, printer, or clerk, who does not live in a more stylish house, fare more sumptuously, and dress more expensively, than the Editor in Chief. The experiment, however, is incomplete. Nine-tenths of those who assist in the work of the Tribune are connected with it solely by the tie of wages, which change not, whether the profits of the establishment fall to zero or rise to the highest notch upon the scale. More of association in the next chapter, where our hero appears, for the first time, in the character of author. The Lecture System-Comparative popularity of the leading Lecturers-Horace Gree ley at the Tabernacle-His audience-His appearance-His manner of speakingHis occasional addresses-The Hints' published-Its one subject, the Emancipation of Labor-The Problems of the Time-The 'successful' man-The duty of the State-The educated class-A narrative for workingmen-The catastrophe. LECTURING, of late years, has become, in this country, what is facetiously termed 'an institution.' And whether we regard it as a means of public instruction, or as a means of making money, we cannot deny that it is an institution of great importance. "The bubble reputation," said Shakspeare. Reputation is a bub. ble no longer. Reputation, it has been discovered, will 'draw. Reputation alone will draw! That airy nothing is, through the instrumentality of the new institution, convertible into solid cash, into a large pile of solid cash. Small fortunes have been made by it in a single winter, by a single lecture or course of lectures. Thackeray, by much toil and continuous production, attained an income of seven thousand dollars a year. He crosses the Atlantic, and, in one short season, without producing a line, gains thirteen thousand, and could have gained twice as much if he had been half as much a man of business as he is a man of genius. Ik Marvel writes a book or two which brings him great praise and some cash. Then he writes one lecture, and not a very good one either, and transmutes a little of his glory into plenty of money, with which he buys leisure to produce a work worthy of his powers. Bayard Taylor roams over a great part of the habitable and uninhabitable globe. He writes letters to the Tribune, very long, very fatiguing to write on a journey, and not salable at a high price. He comes home, and sighs, perchance, that there are no more lands to visit. "Lecture!" suggests the Tribune, and he lectures. He carries two or three manuscripts in his carpet-bag, equal to half a dozen of his Tribune letters in bulk. He ranges the country, far and wide, and brings back money enough to carry him ten times round the world. It was his reputation that did the business. He earned that money by years of adventure and endurance in strange and exceedingly hot countries; he gathered up his earnings in three months-earnings which, but for the invention of lecturing, he would never have touched a dollar of. Park Benjamin, if he sold his satirical poems to Putnam's Magazine, would get less than hod-carriers' wages, but, selling them directly to the public, at so much a hear, they bring him in, by the time he has supplied all his customers, five thousand dollars apiece. Lecturing has been commended as an antidote to the alleged docility' of the press, and the alleged dullness of the pulpit. It may be. I praise it because it enables the man of letters to get partial payment from the public for the incalculable services which he renders the public. : Lectures are important, tou, as the means by which the public are brought into actual contact and acquaintance with the famous men of the country. What a delight it is to see the men whose writings have charmed, and moved, and formed us! And there is something in the presence of a man, in the living voice, in the eye, the face, the gesture, that gives to thought and feeling an expression far more effective than the pen, unassisted by these, can ever attain. Horace Greeley is aware of this, and he seldom omits an opportunity of bringing the influence of his presence to bear in inculcating the doctrines to which he is attached. He has been for many years in the habit of writing one or two lectures in the course of the season, and delivering them as occasion offered. No man, not a professional lecturer, appears oftener on the platform than he. In the winter of 1853-4, he lectured, on an average, twice a week. He has this advantage over the professional lecturer. The professional lecturer stands before the public in the same position as an editor; that is, he is subject to the same necessity to make the banquet palatable to those who pay for it, and who will not come again if they do not like it. But the man whose position is already secure, to whom lecturing is only a subsidiary employment, is free to utter the most unpopular truths. A statement published last winter, of the proceeds of a course of ectures delivered before the Young Men's Association of Chicago, affords a test, though an imperfect one, of the popularity of some of our lecturers. E. P. Whipple, again to borrow the language of the theater, drew' seventy-nine dollars; Horace Mann, ninety-five; Geo. W. Curtis, eighty-seven; Dr. Lord, thirty-three; Horace Greeley, one hundred and ninety-three; Theodore Parker, one hundred and twelve; W. H. Channing, thirty-three; Ralph Waldo Emerson, (did it rain?) thirty-seven; Bishop Potter, forty-five; John G. Saxe, one hundred and thirty-five; W. H. C. Hosmer, twenty-six; Bayard Taylor (lucky fellow!) two hundred and fifty-two. In large cities, the lecturer has to contend with rival attractions, theater, concert, and opera. His performance is subject to a comarison with the sermons of distinguished clergymer, of which some are of a quality that no lecture surpasses. To know the importance of the popular lecturer, one must reside in a country town the even tenor of whose way is seldom broken by an event of com manding interest. The arrival of the great man is expected with eagerness. A committee of the village magnates meet him at the cars and escort him to his lodging. There has been contention who should be his entertainer, and the owner of the best house has carried off the prize. He is introduced to half the adult population. There is a buzz and an agitation throughout the town. There is talk of the distinguished visitor at all the tea-tables, in the stores, and across the palings of garden-fences. The largest church is generally the scene of his triumph, and it is a triumph. The words of the stranger are listened to with attentive admiration, and the impression they make is not obliterated by the recurrence of a new excitement on the morrow. Not so in the city, the hurrying, tumultuous city, where the reappearance of Solomon in all his glory, preceded by Dodworth's band, would serve as the leading feature of the newspapers for one day, give occasion for a few depreciatory articles on the next, and be swept from remembrance by a new astonishment on the third. Yet, as we are here, let us go to the Tabernacle and hear Horace Greeley lecture. The Tabernacle, otherwise called 'The Cave,' is a church which looks as little like an ecclesiastical edifice as can be imagined. It is a large, circular building, with a floor slanting towards the platform-pulpit it has none—and galleries that rise, rank above rank, nearly to the ceiling, which is supported by six thick, smooth columns, that stand round what has been impiously styled the 'pit,' like giant spectators of a piginy show. The platform is so placed, that the speaker stands not far from the center of the building, where he seems engulfed in a sea of audience, that swells and surges all around and far above him. A better place for an oratorical display the city does not afford. It received its cavernous nickname, merely in derision of the economical expenditure of gas that its proprietors venture upon when they let the building for an evening entertainment; and the dismal hue of the walls and columns gives further propriety to the epithet. The Tabernacle will contain an audience of three thousand persons. At present, there are not more than six speakers and speakeresses in the United States who can 'draw' it full; and of these, Horace Greeley is not one. His number is about twelve hundred. Let us suppose it half past seven, and the twelve hundred arrived. The audience, we observe, has decidedly the air of a country audience. Fine ladies and fine gentlemen there are none. Of farmers who look as if they took the Weekly Tribune and are in town tonight by accident, there are hundreds. City mechanics are present in considerable numbers. An ardent-looking young man, with a spacious forehead and a turn-over shirt-collar, may be seen here and there. A few ladies in Bloomer costume of surpassing uglinessthe costume, not the ladies-come down the steep aisles now and then, with a well-preserved air of unconsciousness. In that assembly no one laughs at them. The audience is sturdy, solid-looking, appreciative and opinionative, ready for broad views and broad humor, and hard hits. Every third man is reading a newspaper, for they are men of progress, and must make haste to keep up with the times, and the times are fast. Men are going about offering books for sale-perhaps Uncle Tom, perhaps a treatise on Water Cure, and perhaps Horace Greeley's Hints toward Reforms; but certainly something which belongs to the Nineteenth Century. A good many free and independent citizens keep their hats on, and some 'speak right out in meeting,' as they converse with their neighbors. But the lecturer enters at the little door under the gallery on the right, and when the applause apprizes us of the fact, we catch a glimpse of his bald head and sweet face as he wags his hasty way to the platform, escorted by a few special adherents of the "Cause" he is about to advocate. The newspapers, the hats, the conversation, the book-selling are discontinued, and silent attention is the order of the night. People with 'causes' at their hearts are full of business, and on such occasions there are always some preliminary announcements to be made-of lectures to come, of meetings to be held, of articles to appear, of days to celebrate, of subscriptions to be undertaken. These over, the lecturer rises, takes his place at the desk, and, while the applause, which never fails on any public occasion to greet this man, continues, he opens his lecture, puts on his spectacles, and then, looking up at the audience with an express. ion of inquiring benignity, waits to begin. Generally, Mr. Greeley's attire is in a condition of the most hope. |