Samuel Siegel, the great mandolinist, who is known to more people
than any other player of this instrument, is very popular
throughout the South. He is the originator of the system used
by the Siegel-Myers Correspondence School of Music, and is
also exclusive mandolinist for the Edison, Victor and Columbia
Phonograph Companies. Mr. Siegel will tour the South next season
at the head of the Siegel-Meyer-Reed Concert Company.
]
The Lyceum Platform.
By Dr. James Hedley.
The Lyceum Platform is one of the world’s evangels. It has its teachers,
heroes, apostles and prophets. It has had a wonderful history, and is
still making history. It is a marvellous power for intellectual, social
and moral good, and never more so than to-day. Its lecturers are strong
not only in their ability to entertain, but in all those attributes which
make for the best in human character. It goes without saying that such
men come to the people with a message. Whether it be Watterson or Graves,
or De Motte, or Conwell or Wendling, or Willitts; whether Dolliver,
Gunsaulus, Hillis, Miller, Bain, McIntyre, McClary, or delightful Bob
Taylor, the minds, hearts and consciences of men are turned in the
direction of right things, and there is an impetus and an uplift which
blesses all who hear.
How wide the influence, and how great the responsibility of the lyceum
lecturer! In a general way, at least, all men concede the power of
oratory. The close student of the sources of human influence fully
recognizes that power, in all its good and evil possibilities. Eloquently
spoken words produce more immediate and fully as permanent results as
eloquently written ones. When Demosthenes delivered a patriotic oration,
the people who heard him said at once, “Let us go and fight Philip!”
A little child after listening to George Whitefield’s beautiful and
impassioned pictures of Heaven and the Deity, sobbed, “Let me go to Mr.
Whitefield’s God!” There are hundreds in our country to-day who are what
they are, not only in the success and happiness of their own lives, but
as factors toward the wise solution of the profoundest problems of being
because of the spoken words, the messages of the present-day lyceum.
The Lyceum Platform thirty and forty years ago could boast of a score
of thinkers, some of whom were orators; they served well their day and
generation; products of the “form and pressure of the time,” they met
its requirements, and left behind them evidences of work nobly done, and
no man can say the memory of them shall perish. In far greater measure,
because of the infinitely greater number of superior lecturers, the
common people to-day are being educated in every phase of thought and
purpose worthy earnest consideration. When one considers all this, the
faint cry occasionally heard from those who do not take wide views of
existing conditions, as to the “decay of the lyceum” is not warranted.
Wherever and whenever the true lyceum idea is conserved in the work of
the platform, the evidences of strength, wisdom and beauty are at once
evident and undeniable.
Since the earlier days, the Lyceum has taken on an entertainment phase,
which, while not wholly related to the lyceum idea, serves admirably
in meeting and filling the desire there is and ever will be in the
human heart for the joyous pleasures of life. The entertainment side
of the Lyceum belongs to the realm of the heart paramountly, if not
wholly, while the work of the lecturer appeals to the intellect and
the conscience, and so the “three thirds” which make men up—the Mind,
the Heart and the Conscience—are accorded that which strengthens and
enriches. Herein have we all of life’s philosophy, brought to us with
mental conviction, with emotional delighting, and spiritual moving. We
get glimpses of what may be called the Trinity of Man. There is no side
of us which does not respond. Let all this triune service of the Lyceum
be clean and high; let not the desire for financial gain hush one worthy
voice, or turn aside from the straight path a single lofty purpose,
and the Lyceum shall be maintained so long as time endures, because it
shall be of the blessed things which are not born to die. Lecturers and
entertainers may come and go as individual factors of lyceum work, but
the Lyceum as an idea, a force, an inspiration, shall go on forever.
The traveler looking upon Niagara sees the onward rush and surge
of countless drops of water. They sweep by and pass on, and return
not again. Still other countless millions of drops follow them, and
forever follow, and so in spite of separateness, there is perpetuity
and permanence. Niagara is immortal. The teachers, heroes, apostles,
prophets, singers and entertainers, come and go, and pass out to the
great sea beyond, but others come with word and song and smile, and
forever shall they come, and so as with Niagara, there is perpetuity and
permanence. The Lyceum Platform is immortal.
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