The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1868-04-27

AUDIENcEs.-I,h have been kindly treated
by great many, and may occasionally facs
one hereafter. But / tell you the average
intellect Of five hundred persons, taken at
, they come, is not very high. 1t may be
sound and safe, so far as it goes, hut it is moi
! very rapid or profound. "A lecture ought Il
be something which all can understand
about something which interests everybody
| think that if any experienced lecturer
gives you a different account from this, Il
will probably be one Of those eloquent on
forcible speakers who hold an audience by
the charm of their manner, whatever they
talk about, even when they don't talk very
we'll.
But an average, which was what I meant
to speak about, is one Of the most extraor-
dinary subjects Of observation and study.
1t is awful in its uniformity, in itg auto
matte necessity of action. Two commune
ties of ants or bees are exactly alike in all
their actions, SO far as ne can see. Two ly-
ceum assemblies, of FIVE hundred each,
are SO nearly alike that they are absolutely
undistinguishable in many cases by any
definite mark, and there is nothing but the
place and time by which one can tell the
:" remarkably intelligent audience Of q
town in New York or Ohio from one in
any New England town of SINH
liar size. Of course, if any principle
of selection has come in as in those
special associations Of young men which
are common in cities, it deranges the uni
formity of the assemblage. But let there
be no such interfering circumstances, and
one knows pretty well even the look
the audience will have before he goes in.
Front seats, a few old folks (shiny-headed)
slant up best ear toward the speaker; drop
off asleep after awhile, when the air begins
to get little narcotic with carbonic acid
Bright women's faces, young and middle
aged, little behind these, but toward the
front-pick out the best, and lecture mainly
to that. Here and there countenance
sharp and scholar-like, and a dozen
pretty female ones sprinkled about. An
indefinite number Of pairs Of young people
happy, but not always very attentive. Boys
in the back ground more or less quiet. Dull
faces here, therein how many places! ]
don't say dull people, but faces without a
ray of sympathy or movement of express
sion. They are what kill the lecturer.
These negative faces, with their vacuous
eyes and stony lineaments pump and suck
the warm soul out of him that is the chief
reason why lecturers grow SO pale before
the season is over. They render latent any
amount of vital caloric; they act on our
mind rs those cold-blooded creatures / was
talking about act on our hearts.
Out of all these inevitable elements the
audience is generated-a great compound
vertebrate, rs much like fifty others you
have seen as any two mammals of the same
species are like each other. Each audience
laughs, and each cries, in just the same
place of your lecture; that is, if you make
one laugh or cry, you make all. Even those
little indescribable movements which a
lecturer takes cognizance Of, just as q
driver notices his horses cooking his ears,
are sure to come in exactly the same
place of your lecture, always. I 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 figures the realities-1 have
sometimes felt as if were a wandering spi-
rit, and this great unchanging multiverte-
brate which l faced night after night, was
one ever-listening animal, which writhed
along after me wherever l fed, and coiled
at my feet every evening, turning up to me
the same sleepless eyes which thought
had closed with my last drowsy incanta-
tion l-HOlueS