Etc. [pp. 480-481]

[Nov.
ETC.
THE popularity of dialect poetry has de clined so rapidly that there are no new vent ures in that direction. Even the host of im itators no longer come to the front with their
atrocities of speech. The original singing birds may not have been thrushes or orioles;
but the crows and magpies which came after ward-these ought to be stoned. We do not
like an imitation, even if the performance surpasses the original. The poverty of inven tion offends, and the suggestion of spuriousness only increases the dislike.
A NEW lecture -season is about to be inau gurated east of the Rocky Mountains. Some thing like a thousand persons are ready to itinerate and speak their piece wherever they can
get an audience. In the whole number, there
may be fifty who have something to say worth
hearing; as for the others, they will do little
harm. The modern lecture sustains about
the same relation to literature that milk and
warm water does to tea and coffee. If we
can get nothing better, we accept the harmless insipidity. It is but just to say, that,
while the average lecture carries with it very
little instruction, it rarely fails to entertain a
promiscuous audience for an hour. The lecturer, before a new audience, rattles along
with his commonplaces, or says his smart
things, with the consciousness that the freshness and novelty of a new set of hearers
greatly helps him out, while the rest of the
stimulus is in the fifty or a hundred dollars,
at the end of the performance. The lecture
system has not fallen into decadence, partly
because there is some "new blood" added
every year, and partly because there is a craving for something in the way of entertainment which the lecture furnishes, or suggests.
The smart towns and villages are often exceedingly humdrum places, where there is a
vast amount of concentrated dullness. The
lecture may be poor enough, and yet, after
all, be the best performance of the season.
Five hundred or a thousand well - dressed
people are often glad enough to find a reason
for leaving their own houses and looking into
the faces of their neighbors. If it happen
that the lecturer should utter something worth
the hearing, this is additional gain. If oth erwise, they really have not lost any thing.
It often happens that the social standing of
people in these villages is fixed in an arbitra ry way. Smith and Jones were both at the
lecture, and both thumped the floor with
much surplus energy, when the speaker
launched his best platform-joke for the seventieth time. If people who attend popular
lectures have not a good degree of culture,
pray who are to be recognized as coming up
to that standard?
The lecture system does, at least, contain
the promise of something better in the future.
Half a dozen sporadic lectures may be enough
for the town people now. But, after awhile,
the lecturer who comes to instruct the people
will be accepted; his course of scientific or
historical lectures will not fall on listless ears.
This transition has already commenced. The
more cultivated communities say, in effect, to
lecturers: If you can tell us any thing that
we ought to know, in any department of literature or science, begin at once; but, if otherwise, try your platform antics in the next
town.
WE have not yet come to have a hearty
relish for a Norther. A more blasphemous
gale wasnever let loose on this planet. The
character of the late one is illustrated in part
by the fact, that, while it dealt tenderly with
many an old rookery, it irreverently tumbled
over a new church before it had been consecrated. Its desiccating influence was not only
seen in the cracking of ceilings, and the falling down of wall - paper, and the withering
of the freshest flowers and shrubs, but it dried
480
ETC.