Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1858-04-12
CHARACTERISTICS FAUDIENCES

Audiences are very amusingly gossiped abou t
by DIR. Holmes, in the last number of the At
ianhc Monthly The funny doctor thus re-
lieves his mind
" A new lecture has always certain excite
ment connected with its delivery. One thinks
well OF IT as OF most things fresh from his mind
AFTER lew deliveries of it, one gets tired and
then dlsgusted with its repetition TO on de.
ilverlng IT, and the disgust passes off, until
after one has repeated it a hundred or a hum
dred anu fifty times, he rather enjoys the hun
dred and hrst or hundred and fifty first time
before a new audience. But this Is on one
condltion-that he never lays the lecture down
and lets it cool. Ii he does, there comes on a
loathing for ii which is intense so that the sight
OF the old battered manuscript is as bad as sea-
sickness
He goes on TO speak of audiences as follows:
Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred
each, are go nearly alike that, they are abso-
iuteiy undistinguishable in many cases by any
definite mark, and there is nothing but the
place aud time by which one can tell the re-
markedly intelligent audience of a town in
New Ork or Ohio from one in any New Eng
land town OF similar size. One knows pretty
well even the look the audience will have be-
fore he goes in. Front seats, a few old folks
shiny ed,-slant up the best ear towards
the speaker,-drop off sleep after a while,
when the air begins to get a little narcotic
with carbonic acid Bright womans faces,
young and middle aged, little behind these,
put towards the frOnt-(pick out the best and
lecture mainly to that) Here and there
countenance sharp and schOlar-like and dozen
pretty female ones sprinkled about An in
dehnltc number Of pairs of young people
nappy, but not always very attentive. BOYS
IN the background, more or less quiet. Dull
faces here, therein how many places? 1
don say dull peopie, but faces without ray
OF sympathy or a movement Of expression.
They are what kill the lecturer. These mega
tive faces with their vacuous eyes and stony
hneamentS pump and suck the warm soul out
Of him
The doctor pursues the subject thus:
OGt OF all these inevitable elements the au-
dIence Is senerated-a great compound verte-
brate, as much like fifty others you have seen
as any two animals Of the same species are
like each other. Each audience laughs and
each cries In just the same places of your lec-
ture; that Is, If you make one laugh or cry,
you make all. Even those little indescribable
movements which n lecturer takes coynizance
OF, just as driver notices his horses cooking
his ears are sure to come IN exactly the same
place OF your lecture, always. l declare to
you, that, as the monk said about the picture
In the convent, that he sometimes thought the
living tenants were the shadows, and the
painted hSures the realities-l have sometimes
felt as If l were wandering spirit and this
great unchanging multivertebrate which [
faced night after night was one ever listening
animal, which writhed along after me wherever
L lied, and cOiled at my feet every evening"
turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which
L thought had closed with my last drowsy in
cantatiOn.'