progress of Christian civilization as there is now for great painters.
All these walls ought to be covered with magnificent paintings teaching
some great divine truth, and every school-house, yes, every barn, ought
to have some picture upon it that will instruct and inspire. All our
children seek to go to the moving pictures, and that shows what an
agency there is in pictures for the instruction of mankind. We need
artists by the thousands. It is not a surprise to me that a New York man
is getting a salary of $35,000 a year for moving-picture work because
"he notices something other people have not seen." It is no surprise
that a great store in that city pays an advertising man $21,000 a year
salary. He can see what the rest of the public does not see.
We need great artists, hundreds of them. Where are you going to find
them? You will say "at the art school, in the National Gallery in
London, or at the Louvre in Paris, or in Rome." Well, it may be that you
will. But it is an unfortunate thing for your theory that one of the
greatest painters in America painted with a cat's tail. It is another
enlightening thing that the man who received the highest prize at the
World's Fair in Chicago for a landscape painting never took "a lesson"
in color or drawing in his life.
But that doesn't argue against lessons nor against schools or
universities. Don't misunderstand me in this. I am only making emphatic
my special subject.
He took the highest prize and never went to an art school in his life.
If he had attended school the teacher might have tried to show him
something and thus weakened his mind. The teacher in a school who shows
a child anything that that child could work out for himself is a curse
to that child. It is an awful calamity for a child to be under the
control of a too kind-hearted teacher who will show him everything.
One of the greatest artists was Charlotte Bronte. She was a wonderful
little woman, and I like little women. Did you ever read Longfellow's
poem on "Little Women"? It always reminds me so much of Charlotte
Bronte. One day he showed me the poem, and I asked him why he did not
print it in his book, and he replied, "I don't think it is worth while."
Since his death they have given it first rank, and I will quote one
verse:
As within a little rose we find the richest dyes,
As in a little grain of gold much price and value lies,
And as from a little balsam much odor doth arise,
So in a little woman there's a gleam of paradise.
Charlotte Bronte was one of those wonderful, wiry, beautiful little
cultivated combinations of divine femininity which no man can describe.
She had a younger brother on her hands, and when a young woman has a
younger brother on her hands if she has a beau, she has her hands full.
This younger brother was dull of brains, clumsy of finger and unfitted
to be an artist. But his sister was determined he should be a painter,
and took him to the shore, to the village and the woods, and said,
"Notice everything, and notice it closely." Finally, he did secure a
second prize. Then his little sister threw her arms about her brother's
neck and kissed him, and thanked him for getting that prize. That is
just like a woman! I never could understand a woman. Of all the
mysterious things that the Lord ever put together, a woman is the most
mysterious. Charlotte Bronte was like an old lady I used to know up in
my native town who thanked her husband, with tears, for having brought
up a flock of sheep which she herself fed every morning through the
winter before he was out of bed.
Finally, Charlotte Bronte's younger brother became dissipated and died,
and then her father died, and when we ministers get to be old we might
as well die. She was left without means of support. But when she told
her friends, they said: "You have a college education, Charlotte. Why
don't you write something?" We now find that the first thing she wrote
was "Jane Eyre," the wonderful story for which she at last received
$38,000. Queen Victoria invited that humble girl to her palace at
Windsor because of her marvelous genius.
How came she to write a book like that? Simply because she had noticed
so closely, for her brother's sake, that from the nib of her pen flowed
those beautiful descriptions as naturally as the water ripples down the
mountain-side. That is always so. No man ever gives himself for others'
good in the right spirit without receiving "a hundredfold more in this
present time."
I will go one step farther with this thought. We do need great painters,
but we don't want more painters like that man who painted the Israelites
coming out of Egypt, representing them with muskets on their shoulders
with U.S. on the butts.
But more than artists we need great musicians. There is an awful need of
music. We have too much noise, but very little real music. Did you ever
think how little you have? Do you suppose a true musician is simply a
man who roars down to low B and squeals to high C? What an awful need
there is of the music which refines the heart, brightens the mind; that
brings glory and heaven down to men. I have not the space here to expand
upon that thought--the awful need of humanity for real music. But we
don't get it. I do not know why it is. I am not able to explain. But
perhaps I can hint at what music is.
At Yale I had to earn my own living, and that is why, for these
forty-four years, I have been lecturing exclusively to help young men
secure their college education. I arose at four o'clock and worked in
the New Haven House from four to eight to get the "come backs" from the
breakfast table so that my brother and I could live. Some days, however,
I digged potatoes in the afternoon, and taught music in the evening,
although the former was my proper occupation. Sometimes my music
scholars would invite me in to play something to entertain their
company, and I noticed the louder I played the louder they talked. I
often said, "What a low standard of musical culture there is in New
Haven!" But I learned something after I left college. I learned I was not
a musician.
Had I been a musician they would have listened. That is the only test of
real music. There is no other.
If you sing and every one whispers, or you play and every one talks, it
is because you are not a musician. I dare tell it to you here, when I
would not dare say it to you individually if we were alone. There is no
person on earth who gets so many lies to the square inch as a person who
drums on a piano.
What is music? Music may be wholly a personal matter and be called
music. I remember Major Snow, of my native town, who used to listen to
the filing of the saw at the sawmill. How that did screech and scratch
until it hurt to our toes! We asked the old major why he went down to
the mill Saturday, when he could go any other day. He said: "Oh, boys,
you do not understand it. When I was young I worked in a sawmill and I
come down here to hear them file that saw. It reminds me of the good old
days. It is music to me." He was "educated up" to that standard where
filing of a saw was music to him, and so men may be educated in all
manner of ways in so-called music. But it is not the real music.
What is true music? I went to a beautiful church in New York to exchange
with the pastor, and an officer of the church came down the aisle as I
walked in and said to me, "Sir, the choir always opens the service."
They did; they opened it! I sat down on the pulpit sofa and waited an
embarrassingly long time for something to be done up there. The choir
roosted on a shelf over my head. The soprano earned $4,000 a year, and I
was anxious to hear her. Soon I heard the rustle of silk up there, and
one or two little giggles. Then the soprano began. She struck the lowest
note her cultivated voice could possibly touch, and then she began to
wind, or rather, corkscrew, her way up and up and up, out of sight--and
she stayed up there. Then the second bass began and wound his way down,
down, down--down to the Hades of sound--and he stayed down there.
Now, was that music? Was it worship? Why, if I had stood in that sacred
place and positively sworn at the people it would not have been greater
sacrilege than that exhibition up on that shelf! Do you think the living
God is to be worshiped by a high-flying, pyrotechnic, trapeze
performance in acoustics? Neither worship nor music was there. Music
does not consist of a high-flying circus trapeze performance in
acoustics.
What is music? Music is such a combination of sound as moves the heart
to holier emotions, quickens the brain to brighter thoughts, and moves
the whole man on to nobler deeds. That is music. Nothing else is music.
You can only find out whether you are a musician or not by _taking
notice_, while you sing, whether you hold the attention of the people,
and whether you influence their memory and their after character.
V
NEED OF ORATORS
We need great orators. The need is something alarming. I am often called
to lecture at the Chautauquas and the lyceums, and the committees often
urge me to recommend some man or woman who will fill a place on the
public platform. They offer marvelous rewards for those who will do that
well. There are no men or women alive, not one known in our land to-day,
who could be called a great orator. When I began to lecture, fifty-eight
years ago, there were Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, George
William Curtis, Edward Everett, the greatest orator of his day--and John
B. Gough. I esteem it a great honor to have been induced by Mr. Gough to
go on the lecture platform. They are all gone, and no successors have
appeared.
Liberty and oratory have ever gone together, and always will, hence the
need of oratory is especially pressing now.
Why don't we have orators? The editors say "because the newspaper has
come in and goes into every home, and a man on Sunday will read a better
sermon in his newspaper than ever was delivered, and will save paying
the minister and having trouble with the choir." Now, that time will
never come. You will never get along without real orators, no matter how
many newspapers you may have. I respect the press. I have had something
to do with its work in my lifetime. I have worked upon and owned a daily
newspaper. But I must say that there is something, after all, in the
shake of a living man's finger, something in the flash of his eye,
something in the stamp of his foot, but vastly more in his mesmeric
power, which no cold type will ever express! You never can fully express
the living man in cold lead.
Why don't we have great orators? I don't think the newspapers are in the
way. But other people say to me. "It is the injurious effect of the
modern school of elocution, which is now called 'the school of
oratory.'" It has only been a few years since all these elocutionary
schools changed their names to "schools of oratory" and consequently
damaged the prospect of our country. The school of elocution may not be
a school of oratory at all. It may be a hindrance to oratory; it
depends on what the teaching is. There is a wide difference between
elocution and real oratory. Elocution is an art of expression, which
every teacher has, and he teaches his own art. But oratory is the great
science of successful speech. The man who gets what he pleads for is an
orator, no matter how he calls. If you call a dog and he comes, that is
oratory. If he runs away, that is elocution!
Why don't we have greater orators? These schools of elocution remind me
of an incident which occurred about seventeen years ago. I don't believe
I will hurt any one's feelings now by mentioning it. The professor of
elocution was sick one day, and the boys came after me. They wanted me
to come because the teacher was away, and I resolved to go and entertain
that class and let it pass for a recitation. Professors often do that.
When I came into the class-room, I said to the boy on the front seat:
"What was the last lesson you had in elocution?" One of the boys said:
"Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers;
If Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers,
Where are the six pecks of pickled peppers which Peter Piper picked?"
That is "lip exercise" in elocution. I said to that young man, "I will
not teach elocution. But I wish you would come up and deliver that to
this class just as you would to an audience." The boy came up and put
his toes together, and his hands by his side, for he had not reached the
study of gesture. He yelled very rapidly and loudly:
"Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers;
If Peter Piper, piping, picked six pecks of pickled peppers,
Where are the pecks of pickled peppers which Peter Piper picked?"
It was elocution, but it was not oratory. I had trouble in getting up
another boy, but I finally did. He thought that oratory consisted
entirely in elocutionary "inflections," so he delivered it:
"Peter Piper picked six pecks of pickled peppers;
If Peter piping picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?"
(With marked raising and lowering of the voice.)
It sounded like an old rooster in the barn in the morning. But being
elocution, it was not oratory.
But the most illustrative and most absurd speech I ever heard was by a
visitor in that class that day. He was sitting over near the aisle, and
one of the students came and whispered to me: "That young man has
graduated from an Eastern school of elocution, and he is going to act
the heavy parts in tragedy upon the stage. He is a great elocutionist,
and won't you get him to recite something to the class?" I fell into the
trap, and went down to the young man, and said: "I understand you are an
elocutionist. Will you come up and recite something for the class?"
As soon as he looked up at me I saw by his eyes there was something the
matter with his head. I do not know just what, but things have happened
since that make it no unkindness to refer to him the way I do. I said:
"Please come up and recite something," and he replied: "Shall I recite
the same thing the young men have been reciting?" I said, "You don't
need to do that; take anything." He left his gold-headed cane--the best
part of him--on the floor, and then he came up to the platform and
leaned on the table and said to me: "Shall I recite the same thing the
young men have been reciting?" I said: "You can if you wish. You are
perfectly free to take anything you choose. The professor is away,
anyhow. When the cat is away the mice will play."
Then he began to prepare himself for that recitation. I never saw such
behavior in my life. He pulled up his sleeves, brushed back his hair,
shook himself, moved the table away forward, and I slid far back by the
door and left the platform open, for I didn't know what he was going to
do next. Then he gave the selection:
"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper-r-rs;
If Peter Piper, piping piper, picked a peck of pickled pepper-r-r-rs,
Where's the peck of pickled pepper-r-r-rs Peter Piper
pickle-picker-r-r picked?"
He rolled in a flutter the letter "r" in each line. That class looked up
with awe, and applauded until he repeated it. It was still elocution,
but it was not oratory. He thought that oratory consisted of rolling the
"r's" and rolling himself. That is not oratory.
Where do they learn oratory? They learn it in the old-fashioned
school-house, from that old hen at the kitchen door, in some back
office, in some hall, or some church where young men or women get
together and debate, saying naturally the things they mean, and then
_take notice_ of the effects of what they debate upon, the conviction
or after action of those who listen. That is the place to observe. You
must _take notice_ if you are to be a great orator.
The greatest orator of the future will be a woman. It has not been two
months since the management of a women's Chautauqua said, "We could give
$40,000 a year to any woman who will be a natural woman on the
platform." They would make money at $40,000 a year if they hired a woman
who would be a real woman. The trouble is that when women get on the
platform they try to sing bass or try to speak as a man speaks. And
there is such a need for women orators now! I get provoked about it when
I think. Why isn't there a great woman orator like Mrs. Livermore now
when she is needed so much?
VI
WOMAN'S INFLUENCE
If women vote they will be of little account unless they are leaders. It
is of no special advantage to the voter to ignorantly put a piece of
paper in a box. But it is of great account to influence ten thousand
votes. That is what women must do if they are going to exercise their
right under suffrage--they must be the influence behind the throne, not
merely a voter.
When I was a boy in the district school a substitute teacher came in,
and we all loved that little woman. We would do anything she asked us to
do. One day that substitute teacher, who could not get a first-class
certificate, copied a verse of a poem and asked me to read it:
If you cannot on the ocean
Sail among the swiftest fleet:
Rocking on the mighty billows,
Laughing at the storms you meet.
She asked me to read it once, and then she turned the paper over and
said, "Now, Russell, repeat it." I said, "I have not learned it by
heart." Said she: "Don't learn it by heart. I will try again." So she
wrote the second verse:
If you are too weak to journey
Up the mountain steep and high.
Then she said to me, "Now, Russell, read it through once, and notice
carefully each word, and don't look back at a word a second time." I
know not now why she demanded that; I have looked in many books of
psychology and in many places to find out. I have no explanation of
this, and I ask you to think for me, for this is the fact. I took the
second verse and read it through as she told me to do. Then she turned
it over and said, "Please repeat it." I said, "I cannot repeat it; I
have not learned it by heart." She replied: "Don't you say that again.
Just shut your eyes and make a mental effort to see those verses, and
then read it."
I shut my eyes and said, "Oh, it is all dark." Then she seemed very much
disturbed and said: "Now, Russell, don't say that. Won't you try to do
what I ask you to do?"
I thought the little woman was going to cry, so I said, "Yes, I will do
the best I can." She said, "Shut your eyes again and make a determined
effort, with your eyes shut, to see that poetry just as though it were
right before you." I shut my eyes and made that effort, and saw it as
distinctly as though I had held it before my open eyes. So long as my
eyes were shut I could see the two verses, and I read it all through,
word for word, and I read it backward, word for word, to the beginning.
I thought I had seen a ghost. I went home and told my father what had
happened, and he rushed down from the pasture to the school-house and
said to the teacher:
"If you indulge again in your foolish superstitions you will never teach
in that school-house again."
It must have been uncomfortable for her, and her secret went down to the
grave with her, as far as I know. Yet what would I not give if I could
place before the world now what that little girl knew. All our
educational institutions, for which I have labored all these years,
would be as nothing compared with that one secret if I could give it to
you--that secret of being able to look upon a scene and shut's one's
eyes and bring it all back again, study it in detail.
I have not had great personal power in that line. But I have seen a man
who would take a column of the morning paper and read it down, and hand
me the paper and read it through with his eyes shut and scarcely make a
mistake. I do not know that I ever saw any one who was infallible, but
rarely would he make a mistake. Often he could tell me where the comma,
semi-colon, and other marks of punctuation were.
I do not believe there is a normal child who is not mentally capable of
that power when he has a teacher who understands how to develop it. That
little teacher, who held only a second-class certificate, knew more
about psyhology than many of the greatest men who preside over great
institutions.
In the Alps some years ago was Professor Slayton, a native of Brighton,
England. He was one of the nation's best botanists. His wife died and he
was left with a little child between five and six years of age. They
boarded at the Hotel Des Alps, in the Chamouni Valley. One morning he
took his little girl up to the Mer-de-Glace, and then he told her to run
back to the hotel, saying he would return to her in the evening.
She bid her father good-by and saw him go up Mont Blanc into the forest,
and she ran back. He did not return in the evening, and she sat up all
night and worried, and early in the morning she ran out from the hotel
and ran up the stream to the path she had seen her father take. Then,
running across, she started climbing up the side of the great
snow-capped mountain. She came suddenly to a place where the path ran
around along a projecting precipice, two hundred and eighty feet in the
perpendicular, around a promontory of rock that set a few feet back.
When she came to that spot her feet slipped upon the snow on the glare
ice, and she slid down and down over the edge so far that her fingers
just caught in the moss on the edge and one foot rested on about an inch
projection of the rock.
As she hung there she screamed, "Papa!" Her father heard that cry. He
was down in the valley so far that he could not see her, but he could
hear her voice. He recognized it, and he felt there was an awful need of
him--"humanity called to him." He ran across the valley and up the path.
On the way there was a tree near which he had previously _noticed_ there
was an ax. He pulled out the ax and ran on to a tree where he had
previously _observed_ there was a rope which the coal-burners had long
used to let coal down from the cliff. He clipped the rope with the ax,
threw away the ax, and, tying the rope around him as he had _noticed_
the guides do who take travelers over the "sea of ice," he ran on, until
suddenly he came to the spot where his little girl had slipped. He could
see the parting in her hair twenty feet down, and all was glare ice
between. His heart must have stopped beating. But he suddenly shouted:
"Papa's come. Hold on tight!"
She screamed, "I cannot hold on any longer!"
He turned and threatened her. Oh, ye parents, whosoever you may be, you
may save your own son or daughter from a physical or moral death by
training them to obey when they are young. Her fingers tightened again,
and he threw the rope around the butt of a tree he had _noticed_, and
let himself rapidly down over that ice. He tried to get hold of his
little child's hands, but they had melted deep into the moss, and he let
himself down beside her and caught hold of her dress and pulled her to
him.
Both were hanging from the edge of the cliff, and the end of the rope
was in his hand, and his hand on the ice. He tried to pull himself up,
but the rope would not give an inch, and then he tried to push his
little girl up, but with frozen fingers she could not climb.
There they hung in the high Alps, alone! Will he fall on the jagged
rocks and be crushed to death? No, he will not fall, because he is a
king. He has used his _every-day observation_, though he is a graduate
of a university. He had _noticed_ something more--he had observed how
the dogs howl when they find perishing travelers. Those St. Bernard
dogs, whenever they find a dead body or a man laying insensible, will
always howl in one peculiar way. Those dogs know more about acoustics
than an architect. How do they know? God told them. When a dog utters
that cry it can be heard for miles and miles. The professor imitated the
call of the dog, and when it rang down the valley the coal-burners heard
it and the wood-choppers heard it. They said:
"That is a dog, and a dog never howls like that unless he has found a
dying man." So, throwing down their axes and guns, and running over the
snows toward the sound of the call, they suddenly came to the spot. They
caught hold of the rope and one of them slid down rapidly and seized the
little girl's arm and passed her up, and then caught hold of the
professor's arm and lifted him, while the others pulled upon the rope.
Thus they dragged him up. The professor fell on the snow-drift and
fainted dead away.
But he was a king. He heard humanity's cry, and when he heard it he knew
where the ax was. He had used his every-day study in such a way that he
knew where the old rope was, and knew how to tie it, and he knew how to
call for help. Whenever you find on earth a successful man or woman you
will always find it is a man or woman who hears humanity's call, and who
has so used his every-day means of observation that he knows where the
weapons are with which to fight those battles, or where the means are
with which to bring men relief.
I could not better put into your minds that professor's feelings than by
a quotation of an English phrase which he printed in English on his
scientific books, though the books were published in French: