ON THE ROSTRUM.
On reaching Sonora, Tuolumne County, with the frozen toes alluded to in
the great slide down the mountain, I went to work and dug post-holes for
a living. Inspired by the posts or the holes, I wrote what I called a
lecture. This I learned by heart. Next I practised its delivery in the
woods, behind barns, and sometimes at early morn in the empty
Court-house--for the Temple of Justice in Sonora stood open night and
day, and he that would might enter and sleep on the benches, or even in
the bar itself, as many did in those days. Many weeks I drilled and
disciplined this lecture, addressing it to rocks, trees, barns, and
sometimes to unseen auditors wandering about, whose sudden appearance
would cover me with confusion and send me blushing home. But I dreaded
bringing it to an engagement with the enemy--the audience. The glories
and triumphs of oratory I eagerly coveted, but the preliminary labor,
the pangs and the terrible chances of speaking in public I dreaded and
avoided as long as possible. But Destiny, despite all our backwardness,
steadily pushes us on to the most painful experiences. I required yet
feared the living audience. Rocks, trees, and barn doors will not do for
a speaker the specific work of a few listening human beings. Listening
ears sooner or later teach a man who would speak to multitudes to
modulate his voice or increase it to a volume, or spend more time and
strength in accentuating each syllable; and above all, to take things
coolly and not get hurried. At last I concluded to risk myself on an
experimental audience. I borrowed one for the occasion. Going into the
main street of Sonora one evening, I collected half a dozen appreciative
souls and said, “Follow me to the Court-house; I would have a few words
with you.” There was a County Clerk, his deputy, a popular physician and
saloon-keeper, and an enterprising carpenter. They followed me
wonderingly. Arrived at the Court-house I seated them, marched myself to
the Judge’s bench, stuck two candles in two bottles, lit them, and then
informed the crowd that I had brought them hither to serve as an
experimental audience to a lecture I proposed delivering. After which I
plunged into the subject, and found that portion of the brain which with
a speaker always acts independent of the rest wondering that I should be
really talking to live auditors. There is a section of a man’s
faculties, during the operation of speaking in public, which will always
go wandering around on its own hook, picking up all manner of unpleasant
thoughts and impressions. Apparently it is ever on the watch to find
something which shall annoy the other half. It seems to me that no one
can become a very successful speaker or actor until this idle, vagrant
part of the mind is put down altogether, total forgetfulness of all else
save the work in hand be established, and self-consciousness abolished.
However, I spoke half the piece to my borrowed audience, and then,
feeling that I could really stand fire, told them they could go home.
But Dr. ----, constituting himself spokesman, rose and declared that
having served as hearers for half the lecture they thought they were
entitled to the other half. Being thus encored, I gave them the other
half. A great apprehension was now taken from my mind. I could speak to
a crowd without forgetting my lines, and deemed myself already a
lecturer if not an orator. I did not then realize how vast is the
difference between mere speaking and the properly delivering of words
and sentences to a multitude, be it large or small; how unfit are the
tone, pitch, and manner of ordinary converse to public speaking; how a
brake must be put on every word and syllable, to slow down its
accentuation and make it audible in a hall; how great the necessity for
deliberation in delivery; how the force and meaning of entire sentences
may be lost by a gabbling, imperfect, and too rapid enunciation; how the
trained speaker keeps perfect control of himself, not only as to his
delivery, but the mood underneath it; which should prompt how much
depends on the establishment of a certain chain of sympathy betwixt
speaker and audience, and how much the establishment of such chain
depends on the speaker’s versatility to accommodate himself to the
character, intelligence, moods, and requirements of different audiences.
I state this, having since my debut in the Sonora Court-house learned
these things, and learned also that Nature has not given me the power to
surmount all these difficulties. I am not a good speaker, as many
doubtless discovered before I did. However, my friends whom I consulted
said by all means give the lecture in public, knowing, of course, that I
wanted them to encourage me, and feeling this to be the best way of
getting rid of me. So I had posters printed and commenced public life on
a small field. I hired a hall; admittance twenty-five cents. I felt
guilty as I read this on the bills. I read one alone furtively by
moonlight, because after they were posted and the plunge taken I was
ashamed to appear by daylight on the streets. It seemed so presumptuous
to ask respectable, God-fearing citizens of that town to sit and hear
_me_. This was a result of the regular oscillations of my mental and
temperamental seesaw.
I was always too far above the proper scale of self-esteem one day and
too far below it the next. The real debut was not so easy as the
preliminary, borrowed, bogus one. There were the hard, stern, practical
people present, who counted on receiving their regular “two bits” worth
of genuine, solid fact, knowledge and profitable information, who
discounted all nonsense, didn’t approve of it and didn’t understand it.
I felt their cold and withering influence as soon as I mounted the
platform. Not many of such hearers were present, but that was enough to
poison. I saw their judgment of my effort in their faces. I weakly
allowed those faces, and the opinions I deemed shadowed forth on them,
to paralyze, psychologize and conquer me. I allowed my eyes, numberless
times, to wander and meet their stony, cynical gaze, and, at each time,
the basilisk orbs withered up my self-assertion and self-esteem.
Becoming more and more demoralized, I sometimes cowardly omitted or
forgot what I deemed my boldest matter and best hits. However, the large
majority of the audience being kindly disposed toward me, heard,
applauded and pronounced the lecture a “success.” Some ventured, when
it was over, to advise me that the subject-matter was much better than
the manner of its delivery. Of that there was not the least doubt. In
speaking, I had concentrated matter enough for two hours’ proper
delivery into one, and a part of the mental strain and anxiety during
the lecture was to race my words so as to finish within the limits of an
hour on time. I feared wearying the audience, and so took one of the
best methods of doing so. The next day self-esteem, going up to
fever-heat, and my comparative failure not being so bad as the one I had
anticipated when my estimates of myself were at zero, I determine on
pressing my newly-found vocation and “starring” Tuolumne County. Carried
by this transient gleam of self-conceit beyond the bounds of good
judgment, and overwhelmed with another torrent of composition, I wrote
still another lecture, and advertised that. The curiosity, complaisance,
and good-nature of my friends I mistook for admiration. Indeed, during
the fever, I planned a course, or rather a constant succession of
lectures which might, if unchecked, have extended to the present time.
But, on the second attempt, I talked largely to empty benches. A
character of audience I have since become accustomed to, and with whom I
am on terms of that friendship and sympathy only begotten of long
acquaintance. The benches were relieved here and there by a
discouraged-looking hearer who had come in on a free ticket, and who, I
felt, wanted to get out again as quickly as possible. Then, I knew that
my friends did not care to hear me any more. This was bitter, but
necessary and useful. People will go often to church and hear dull
sermons because of custom, of conventionality, and of religious faith
and training. They will attend political meetings during an exciting
campaign and hear equally dull political speeches because of patriotic
or partisan sympathy or fealty. They will go also to hear noted people
because of curiosity, but they will not hear more than once a mere man
unbolstered by any of these outside influences. I next gave the lecture
at Columbia. Columbia, though but four miles distant, was then the rival
of Sonora as the metropolis of Tuolumne County, and it was necessary to
secure a Columbian indorsement before attempting to star it through the
provincial cities of Jimtown, Chinese Camp, Don Pedro’s, and Pine Log. I
billed Columbia, hired the theatre for two dollars and a half, and,
after my effort, had the satisfaction of hearing from a friend that the
appreciative and critical magnates of the town had concluded to vote me
a “success.” Then I spoke at Jamestown, Coulterville, Mariposa,
Snelling’s and other places, with very moderate success. Perhaps I might
have arisen to greater distinction or notoriety than that realized on
the Tuolumne field had I better known that talent of any sort must be
handled by its possessor with a certain dignity to insure respect. Now,
I travelled from town to town on foot. I was met, dusty and perspiring,
tramping on the road, by people who knew me as the newly-arisen local
lecturer. I should have travelled in a carriage. I posted my own bills.
I should have employed the local bill-sticker. I lectured for ten cents
per head, when I should have charged fifty. Sometimes I dispensed with
an admittance fee altogether and took up contributions. In Coulterville,
the trouser-buttons of Coultervillians came back in the hat, mixed with
dimes. Looking back now on that experience, I can sincerely say to such
as may follow me in any modification of such a career, “Never hold
yourself cheap.” If you put a good picture in a poor frame, it is only
the few who will recognize its merit. Don’t let your light shine in a
battered, greasy lamp. It’s all wrong. We all know the dread that genius
inspires when clad in a seedy coat. Lecturing frequently tries a man’s
soul; especially when the lecturer’s career is not a very successful
one. If his path be strewn with roses and success, there may not be much
of a story to tell. But it is different when his path is strewn with
thorns and he steps on them. It is sad to hire a hall in a strange
village and wait for an audience which never comes. It is ominous to
hear your landlord, just before supper, remark, “Our people don’t go
much on lecters. But they’ll pile into a circus or menagerie or anything
else that isn’t improvin’.” They say this all over the land. It is
sadder when you offer him a handful of your free tickets for himself and
family to hear him, “Guess the folks hain’t got time to go to-night.
There is a ball over to Pappooseville, and everybody’s goin’.” I never
did bill myself yet in a village for a lecture, but that I happened to
pitch on the night of all nights when some great local event was to take
place. Or else it rained. It is sad to speak to thirty-two people in a
hall large enough to hold a thousand and try to address those thirty-two
people scattered about at the thirty-two points of the mariner’s
compass. Once in New York I spoke to a fair audience in a hall on the
ground floor. Things went on beautifully till 9 o’clock, when a big
brass band struck up in the bigger hall over my head and some fifty
couples commenced waltzing. It was an earthquake reversed. It ruined me
for the night. None can realize until they enter the lecture field what
trivial occurrences may transpire to upset the unfortunate on the
platform and divert and distract the attention of an audience. On one
occasion a cat got into a church where I was speaking, and trotted up
and down a course she had laid out for herself before the pulpit. She
did this with an erect tail, and at times made short remarks. It is
singular that a single cat acting in this manner is more effective in
interesting and amusing an “intelligent audience” than any speaker.
Under such conditions Cicero himself would have to knock under to the
cat. He might go on talking, but the cat would capture the house. And
then the awful sensation of being obliged to keep on as though nothing
had disturbed you; to pretend you don’t see such a cat; that you are not
thinking of it; and knowing all the while that your audience are getting
their money’s worth out of the cat and not out of you! On another
fearful occasion I was speaking at Bridgehampton, Long Island, on the
subject of temperance. I lectured on temperance occasionally, though I
never professed teetotalism--for any length of time. One can lecture on
temperance just as well without bring a total abstainer--and perhaps
better. Now, I was born and they attempted to bring me up properly near
Bridgehampton. Every one knew me and my ancestors, immediate and remote.
I had not spoken over ten minutes when a man well-known in the
neighborhood and much moved by the whiskey he had been drinking all day,
arose and propounded some not very intelligible queries. I answered him
as well as I could. Then he put more. Nay, he took possession of the
meeting. No one ventured to silence him. They are a very quiet, orderly
people in Bridgehampton. Such an interruption of a meeting had never
before been heard of there, and the people seemed totally unable to cope
with the emergency. The wretch delivered himself of a great variety of
remarks, but ever and anon recurred to the assertion that “he’d vouch
for my character, because he not only knew me, but my parents before
me.” “He was present,” he said, “at their wedding, which he remembered
well from the fact of wine being served there, as well as rum, gin, and
brandy.” That for me was a laborious evening. Sometimes I spoke, and
then the inebriate would get the floor and keep it. He rambled about the
aisles, allayed a cutaneous disturbance in his back by rubbing himself
against one of the fluted pillars, and, when I had at last finished,
made his way up to the choir and, interpolating himself between two
damsels, sang everything and everybody out of tune from a temperance
hymn-book.