connected with the recitals she gave at leading colleges for women. She
spoke of the students she met there as “such charming girls,” and said
she should “never forget the sound of those lovely, fresh American
voices, as we all sang together ‘Auld Lang Syne’ before parting.”
Annie Grey and her mother, while in this country, were frequently guests
at my house, and there met Hall Caine, Zangwill, Justin McCarthy, Lieut.
Herbert Ward, of Stanley expedition fame, and Mr. Le Sage, the New York
representative of the London _Daily Telegraph_.
One evening she and her mother gave the Burns Lecture-Song Recital in
our drawing-rooms. It was a grand success. One of our neighbors, a
well-known critic, who has been a regular attendant at these functions
for years, declared in the presence of the audience that it was the most
delightful entertainment of all we had ever given.
Zangwill took dinner with us another evening, and gave in our parlors
the finest lecture we had yet heard from him. The house was crowded. Mr.
W. F. Frame, the celebrated Scotch singing comedian, and Mr. Booth, the
musical director, were spending that night with us. After the lecture we
had singing by Frame and Annie Grey--a triple bill. At the close of the
evening all the company joined hands and danced around a circle, singing
“Auld Lang Syne.” Zangwill joined hands with us and entered into the
spirit of the whole affair, as much a Scotchman as any of them. It was
jolly, indeed.
Her last appearance in America was on the afternoon of February 2, 1899,
when she gave her “Lilts, Lays, and Legends of Scotland” for the Winter
Memorial Library at the Staten Island Academy. Mr. William Winter
declared it one of the best he remembered in all his experience among
public gatherings, and shortly afterward referred to it again in the
following letter:
* * * * *
“HOME, February 17, 1899.
“MY DEAR MR. POND: I have your kind and welcome letter of February 12,
and I am indeed glad to know that Annie Grey was pleased with her visit
to Staten Island. Her coming to us was an honor and a benefit, and she
made a deep and lasting impression on the minds of her audience. For my
own part, I shall always remember her, and also her venerable mother,
with the greatest kindness and pleasure.
“Faithfully yours,
“WILLIAM WINTER.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth is another great
woman, as much in demand at the present time (1900)
as any of those before mentioned were in their palmiest days.
[Illustration]
Mrs. Booth is the ablest woman orator in America. Her
cause is one of the most worthy. She has something to say
and knows how to say
it. She is also one of
the most loved women
in the land, as well as
the most attractive of
all our public speakers--as
great intellectually
as she is simple and
devoted spiritually.
Possessing fire and
magnetism, with oratorical
gifts of the
highest order, deep
convictions, high purpose,
and burning earnestness,
she has all
the essentials for the
highest of success. It
has been difficult to
induce her to enter upon the lecturer’s work, for she feels, as
all know, so high a devotion to those labors of religion and
philanthropy that her name is associated with as to dread the
fascination of a work that might divert her energies in ever
so slight a degree. But, realizing also possibilities in the
winning of new channels of influence and the earning of means
that may largely help her own work forward, Mrs. Booth has
taken up the task with all her powers, and she fascinates and
wins on all occasions.
Miss Mary Proctor, in her excursions to the heavens,
comes of a line of astronomical ancestry. Richard A.
Proctor, the great English astronomer, gave his first lectures
in America in the early seventies. His coming was widely
heralded by the newspapers and no scientific lecturer ever
met with a more hearty welcome
from the best public.
I remember I went from
Leavenworth, Kansas, where
I then lived, to Chicago, on
purpose to see and hear him,
and paid three dollars for a
ticket.
[Illustration]
That was before the stereopticon
had been invented,
and his illustrations, consisting
of maps and charts drawn
on canvas, were at that time
counted as marvels, though
they would attract no attention
in these modern days.
The scholarly attainments of
the man and his simple, eloquent
descriptions were an additional revelation to the audiences,
which were composed of the most select and intelligent
of the general public.
It was a great season for Professor Proctor, and as fruitful
to the public as it was lucrative to the lecturer, for it created
a general interest in astronomy, which to-day is almost as universally
studied as Brigham Young’s three R’s--“readin’,
’ritin’ and ’rithmetic”--which, he insisted, was all the education
any person needed who had fair common sense.
I know I date my first interest in astronomy to Professor
Proctor’s lectures, and I know, too, that the interest in the
subject became so widespread that it was then a common theme
in the family, at public assemblies and on the cars.
Two prosperous seasons and the professor returned to England,
but not to remain there long. He had met with such
hearty appreciation over here, and had made so many friends,
that he decided to return and make his home in America. He
selected St. Joseph, Mo., one of the richest and, as seemed
to him, one of the many Western cities that must have a great
future. There he moved with his family, consisting of two
daughters and three sons.
After a tour in the South, Professor Proctor returned to
New York, put up at the Westminster Hotel, and was taken
ill there with yellow fever, which he had contracted in Florida.
He died after a very brief illness on September 12, 1888, and
was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, where a monument was
erected over his grave by the late George W. Childs.
During the World’s Fair, in Chicago, at kindergarten
meetings for teachers and children, a young lady gave a lecture
on “Astronomy for Children” before representatives of
the kindergarten schools all over the country. Her audience
was fairly electrified by the simplicity, eloquence, and marvellous
knowledge displayed in this address.
After the lecture, many came forward to congratulate the
fair speaker, and to ascertain who she was and whence she
came. It proved that she was Miss Mary Proctor, of St.
Joseph, Mo., where she had a kindergarten school, and that
she was the daughter of the late Richard A. Proctor, the
famous English astronomer.
Representatives of newspapers from all parts of the country
happened to be present. They telegraphed to their home
papers accounts of this young woman’s wonderful address,
and she awoke the next morning to find herself famous.
I at once proposed that she enter the lecture-field, but it
was with great hesitancy that she could think of leaving her
work with the children, whom she loved so dearly, at her
home in St. Joseph. She was interviewed by reporters, and
asked to write on astronomy for the leading magazines and
the great Sunday newspapers. She also prepared lectures on
astronomy, with elaborate illustrations, and was invited to
lecture before the literary societies and clubs, colleges and
public schools. She has held the very first place as a woman
in the profession up to the present time. She has written a
book on astronomy entitled “Stories of Starland,” for children,
and her name has become a household word. Her great
ambition is to be known as “The Children’s Astronomer.”
She looks young to stand before an audience and deal with
such weighty topics, but she does so in a manner that holds
the attention and interest of every hearer, young or old.
Her voice is clear, forcible, pleasant and well modulated;
her delivery, graceful and easy. She never refers to notes of
any kind while on the platform. Her talks are full of simple
example and metaphor, and free from all technical terms.
She has inherited her father’s gift of popularizing the most
abstruse subjects and illustrating their vastness by comparisons
associated with daily life.
Her lectures for children, “Giant Sun and His Family”
and “Legends of the Stars,” and her more advanced lectures
on “Other Worlds than Ours,” “Wonders of the Star Depths,”
and “Mars, the Planet of Romance,” are all beautifully illustrated
by stereopticon views that are quite as wonderful for
this day as her father’s cruder pictures were thirty years ago.
Miss Mary Proctor is one of the rare examples of the heredity
of genius.
Outshining her charms as a lecturer are the charms of her
private life, where, of course, very few are privileged to know
her. She is the attraction of the household. Children as
well as grown up folks love her, and she is queen of the situation
wherever she happens to be.
It has been our privilege to entertain her in our home several
times. Her theme was usually the skies and the heavens.
The stories she tells about the stars when conversing with little
children on these topics fix in their young minds a
knowledge of the geography of the heavens as long terms of
study from books could never do.
And yet this little lady whom the children love so much,
when surrounded by great scientists and scholars, is perfectly
at her ease. It is a charming intellectual display and
a wonderful lesson and privilege to see Miss Mary Proctor
under any of these conditions.
HUMORISTS
Josh Billings was a popular humorous lecturer for several
years, but not a repeater. There is hardly a village of
five thousand people and over within a radius of five hundred
miles of New York where he has not given his lecture
on “Milk,” the only lecture
which he ever had. He insisted
that a tumbler of milk
should always be on the
table in front of him, to
which he never alluded in
any way whatever. He always
sat down while he
lectured. I don’t remember
of ever seeing him stand a
moment on the platform.
He immediately walked to
his chair, sat down and
commenced his talk.
[Illustration]
His lecture was a shower
of “Josh Billings’s” epigrams,
sparkling as they
tumbled over each other in
falling from his lips, reflected from his bright eyes over his
spectacles.
“Ladies and gentlemen:
“I hope you are all well.”
“There’s lots of folks who eat well and drink well, and yet
are sick all the time. These are the folks who always ‘enjoy
poor health.’”
“People who agree with you never bore you.”
“The shortest way to a woman’s heart is to praise her baby
and her bonnet.”
“A man is a bore when he talks so much about himself that
you kant talk about yourself.”
“Still I go on talking.”
“Comik lecturing is an uncommon pesky thing to do.”
“There ain’t but phew good judges of humor and they all
differ about it.”
“If a lecturer trys to be phunny he iz like a hoss trying to
trot backwards, pretty apt to trod on himself.”
“Humor must fall out uv a man’s mouth like musik out uv
a bobolink, or like a young bird out uv its nest, when it iz
feathered enuff to fly.”
“In delivering a comic lecture it iz a good general rule to
stop sudden; sometimes before you git through.”
“This brings me to the mule--the pashunt mule. The
mule is pashunt because he is ashamed of hisself. The mule
is haf hass and half jackass, and then kums to a full stop,
natur discovering her mistake. They weigh more according
to their heft than enny other creeter except a crowbar. They
kant heer enny quicker nor further than the hoss, yet their
ears are big enuff for snow shoes. You kan trust them with
enny one whose life ain’t worth more than the mules. The
only way to keep them into a paster is tu turn them into a
medder jining and let them jump out. Tha are reddy for use
just as soon as tha will do to abuse. Tha are a modern invention.
Tha never have a disease that a good club wont heal.”
“There is but one other animal that kan do more kicking
than a mule, and that is a quire singer. A quire singer giggles
during the sermon and kicks the rest ov the week.”
“This brings me to suggest the bumble-bee.”
“The bumble-bee iz more artistic than the mule, and as
busy as a quire singer.”
“The hornet is an inflammable buzzer, sudden in his impreshions
and hasty in his conclusion, or end.”
“Kindness iz an instinckt, politeness only an art.”
“Remember the poor--it costs nothing,” and so it goes on
between the intervals of laughter until the hour is up and
laughter won’t come any more because it is completely
laughed out.
“I lecture for nothing, with $100 thrown in,” he said.
We never had the slightest difficulty in filling all the time
that he could give us. He was a delightful man to know
personally--kind, gentle, sincere and very sympathetic, with
an intense fondness for children. A child riding in the same
car with him could hardly escape his patronage and attention,
and what was especially peculiar about him, as with Mr.
Beecher, he always attracted children to him.
When “Josh” passed away, I know that I lost a very dear
friend, and that all who had known and heard him felt the
same way. His was a noble spirit.
I find but two of “Josh Billings’s” (Henry W. Shaw) letters
among my collection, as most of his correspondence was with
the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, and were filed away with the
mass of other correspondence. I find one, directed to me personally,
in reply to an invitation to witness the exposé of
spiritualism by Harry Kellar, at Horticultural Hall in Boston,
and it is as follows:
* * * * *
“NEW YORK, January 16, 1878.
“MAJOR MI DEER: I regret, (i may say that, i fairly mourn,) that i kant
be present to witness yure friend Kellar’s expozure ov spiritualism in
Horticultural Hall in Boston, the hub ov the univers. Altho not present
in the flesh (mi actual weight iz 186 pounds), in spirit i shall be
thare (mi spirit on this partiklar matter ways 642 pounds), the whole ov
which yu are welkum to. Thare are a fu spiritualists whom i pity; these
are the phools,--thare are a greater number whom i dispize; theze are
the frauds, and ded beats ov the profeshion.
“Enny man who kan bring a kounterfitter to justiss, enny man who kan
beat a thimble rigger at his own game, enny man who kan probe a _Three
Kard Monte_ wretch, and dispoil him ov hiz little joker, i look upon az
a child ov genius, at work in the vinyard ov truth and morality. The
only spiritualizm that haz suckceeded yet iz the kind that haz got the
most fraud in it. Tell Harry i pray that suckess may crown hiz noble
efforts.
“Good-by Major
“Yours unto deth--
“‘JOSH BILLINGS’
“(Henry W. Shaw).”
* * * * *
Thomas Nast--up to his time, caricature had been a
minor branch of art. He made it one of the most
potent agencies for creating and influencing public opinion.
[Illustration]
No editor, no orator, no division commander in our army,
no captain in our navy, did more to put down the rebellion
with pen, tongue, or
sword than did Mr. Nast
with his pencil.
It was said of Luther
that his words were half
battles. With equal
truth Nast’s war pictures
were military assaults.
They stirred the patriotic
blood in the North, and
sent battalions of youth
to rally round the flag.
Like many famous artists,
Mr. Nast was personally
shy, and would
sooner go on a forlorn hope than face an audience. After
trying to induce him to join the army of lecturers, and getting
reply after reply declining even to consider the subject, my
predecessor, Mr. Redpath, adopted a course that showed enterprise,
and was successful in inducing Mr. Nast to enter the
lecture field.
Finding that Mr. Nast had quarrelled with the Harpers,
and was going to Europe, Mr. Redpath took passage on the
same steamer, and introduced himself to Mr. Nast. Mr. Nast
laughed and said:
“Well, you have got me where I cannot run away; but it’s
no use--I won’t lecture.”
Mr. Redpath, nevertheless, got his chance to set forth the
advantages of lecturing, went with Nast to London, and before
coming away got his consent, if Mrs. Nast would agree
to it. Returning to New York, he secured Mrs. Nast’s approval,
and the next fall Thomas Nast made his début as a
lecturer. His lectures were illustrated--that is, he drew on
large sheets of paper crayon pictures and pictures in oil in
presence of his audiences. The crayons were both plain and
colored, and he drew with such amazing rapidity that the
people were delighted.
On one occasion, in Philadelphia, he went to his blackboard
and began the outlining of a building. When the sketch was
finished, he turned and said with apparent simplicity, “I can
draw a house.” As the theatre was packed, the double meaning
conveyed “brought down the house” at once.
He had a long list of engagements, six nights a week, with
a certainty of from $200 to $500 a lecture. He earned $40,000
that season, and, as he got homesick, cancelled about
$5,000 worth toward the close. Nevertheless, it is an illustration
of the thorough honesty of the man that he insisted
that the bureau should receive its full commission on the fees
of the cancelled lectures.
Although he met with great success, Mr. Nast had such a
distaste for the work that he could not be induced to try another
season. At first he had stage fright in the worst form.
When he was to make his first appearance in a country town
in Massachusetts--Peabody, I believe--he asked Mr. Redpath
to go with him, and, when he arrived at the hall,
said: “Now, Redpath, you got me into this scrape and you
will have to go on the platform with me.” Mr. Redpath,
who never had that sort of fever, readily enough consented,
and sat on a chair close behind the artist. He said that Mr.
Nast was so nervous that he dug his nails into the reading
desk. A few months afterward, Mr. Nast faced a New York
audience in Steinway Hall as jauntily as if he had been a
veteran comedian.
At the time that Horace Greeley became a candidate for
President of the United States, it was said that Mr. Nast’s
cartoons killed the great editor. Be that as it may, we remember
in that campaign Mr. Nast’s cartoons attracted universal
attention--Horace in the old white coat with the Gratz
Brown card appended to his coat-tails; and this was the way
that card came there.
Mr. Nast had prepared a cartoon of a number of the candidates
on the ticket, with Greeley at the head. It had been
sent into the engraver’s room, when somebody remarked to
Nast that he had omitted the name of the Vice-President.
“Oh,” he said, “is somebody a candidate for Vice-President?
Oh, yes; Brown of Missouri.”
He simply wrote the name and tacked it to the coat-tail of
Greeley, and that went through the papers.
Brown of St. Louis was a delightful man. He signed the
pledge after he was nominated for Vice-President, but during
the campaign tour in the East it was reported that Brown drank
too much at a banquet in New Haven, and the Good Templars’
Society telegraphed to some persons in New Haven to
ask whether the report were true. Word came back that they
did not know whether he were drunk or not, but he ate butter
on his watermelon. One of the cartoons had Brown as Bacchus
a-straddle of a big watermelon, in the act of buttering
a slice.
Another and possibly even a more telling one was the cartoon
which depicted Mr. Greeley as consuming his own broth--that
is, feeding himself from a bowl filled with the denunciations
and criticisms he had, during his long career as the
leading Whig and Republican editor of the United States,
fulminated against the Democratic party and its policies. As
he was that party’s nominee the point was obvious.
The way that the cartoon came to be was something like
this: Once Ben: Perley Poor, the famous correspondent of
the Boston _Journal_, and Richard J. Hinton, a Washington
journalist, were both active and earnest on the side of the
Republican ticket. Hinton was the press secretary of the
Congressional and National committees of his party, and is
fond nowadays of asserting that the “campaign of education,”
then carried on under his direction, was the active
cause of the destruction of the franking privilege that followed
during the first session of Congress in Grant’s second
term. Between these two keen-witted “Knights of the
Quill,” it was decided to prepare and publish a campaign
document containing choice extracts from all the various denunciations
of the Democracy which had appeared in the columns
Mr. Greeley edited. Major Poor was clerk of the Printing
Records Committee of Congress; he knew where the files
were. A score of searchers and copyists were employed, and
in a few days a huge document of nearly two hundred pages
was put into type. A bundle of revises was sent to Nast by
the press secretary with a request for a cartoon. They were
returned at once with the famous picture of Mr. Greeley with
the bowl and the long handled _Tribune_ spoon, from which he
was, politically speaking, thus made to sup sorrow of his own
making.
Petroleum V. Nasby’s letters--to these, next to the
cartoons of Thomas Nast, will the historian undoubtedly
give credit in their influence in inspiring people with enthusiasm
for the cause of the Union. Indeed, a member of Mr.
Lincoln’s cabinet, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Boutwell,
said in a public speech
shortly after the war:
“The rebellion was put
down by three forces: the
army and the navy of the
United States, and the letters
of Petroleum V.
Nasby.”
[Illustration]
Petroleum V. Nasby was
the _nom de plume_ of David
R. Locke of Ohio. At the
beginning of the Civil War
he was a young and obscure
man, editing a little country
paper in the interior of
Ohio. It occurred to him
that it would be a good idea
to write a series of letters,
one a week, exposing and ridiculing the Democratic party.
These letters pretended to be written in earnest by a Confederate
War office-seeker. They succeeded in deceiving even the
County Democrats for a time.
One meeting of the faithful framed a resolution commending
the fidelity to Democratic principles shown in the Nasby
letters, but urging Mr. Nasby, for the sake of policy, not to
be so outspoken. The sarcasm was so broad that it is difficult,
if one reads them to-day for the first time, to understand
how the most illiterate partisans could mistake them. But at
a time when men’s passions were red hot, and their prejudices
volcanic, they were universally applauded by the upholders
of the Union.
The circulation of Locke’s paper rose rapidly, and he became
one of the most famous men in America in less than a
year. He soon bought an interest in the Toledo _Blade_, then
in a dying state. He moved to Toledo, supervised the paper,
and its circulation increased until it rivalled the most popular
journals of the continent both in its sale and its influence.
When he died, in 1888, the _Blade_ for several years had had
a circulation of over one hundred thousand.
From being a poor country editor Locke had become one of
the wealthiest men in the West, and died a millionaire.
Of course, as soon as he had won a national reputation, he
was invited to lecture. He used to boast that he made, during
his first lecture season, the longest and most lucrative
lecture tour recorded in the annals of the lyceum.
He lectured every secular night for nine or ten months, and
made over $30,000 by the tour. His lectures until some time
after the war were very popular; but he had none of the
graces of the orator, and as the war fever abated, he gradually
lost his hold, and retired from the field.
One day Nasby came into our office in Boston just as
Gough was passing out. Nasby said to me:
“I suppose Gough’s mad at me. I was in St. Paul, at the
Merchants’ Hotel, and hard up for a letter. I saw Gough
was registered there, and I ordered two whiskey cocktails sent
to his room. Then I wrote my letter on what I saw.”
Nothing that was said could make “Nasby” see at the
time the outrage he had perpetrated. It is probable, however,
that when his own habits changed, some years later,
he realized the offence committed and the wrong done to a
man of honorable life and pure purposes.
His intense Republicanism made him hate the Irish and
Irish-Americans, and as he afterward said:
“If I ever missed a chance to get a dig at the Irish for
twenty years before I went to Ireland, I can’t remember it.”