The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-11-12
Audiences.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, discoursing
of the lecture going people, writes as
follows:
Ihave been kindly treated by great
many and may occasionally face one
hereafter. But | tell you the average
intellect of five hundred persons, as they
come, is not very high. 1t may be
sound and safe SO far as it goes, but IT.
is not very rapid and profound. A lee
ture ought to he something which ali
can understand - abOut something
which interests everybody. l think
that if any experienced lecturer gives
YOU different account from this, it will
probably be one of these forcible or ell
oquent speakers who hold an audience
by the charm of their manner, what
ever they talk about, when they do not
talk very we'll. But an audience, which
was what / meant 10 talk about, Is one
of the most extraordinary sub
iects of observation aud study.
1t is awful in its unit0rpity, in
its automatic necessity OF action. Two
communities of ants or bees are exactly
alike in all their actions so far as we
five hundred each, are so nearly alike
that they are absolutely iudistingnish
able 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 a town in New York or Ohio from
one in any New England town of Il sim
liar size. OF course, if any principle of
selection has come in, as in these spe-
cal associations of young men, which
are common in cities. it derangeS the
uniformity Of assemblago. But let there
be no such Interfering circumstances.
and one knows pretty well even the
look the audience will have before he
gees in. Front seats, few old folks
shiny headed-slant up best ear toward
the speaker-drop of asleep after
while, when the air begins to get
little narcotic with CarbOnic acid.
Bright w0men'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 cOuu-
tenance sharp aud scholar-like, and q
dozen pretty female ones scattered
about. An indefinite number of young
always very attentive. Boys in the
background, more or less attentive.
Dull faces here, therein how many
places i do not say dali people, but
faces without ray of sympathy or
movement of expression. They are
what kill the lecturer. These negative
faces with their vacuOus eyes and stony
linaments, suck the warm soul out of
him. That is the chief reason why lee
turers grow so pale before the season is
over. They reader latent any amount
of vital caloTiC; they act on our minds
aS those cOid-blOOded creatures i was
talking about act on our hearts.
Out of these elements the audience is
acknowledgement compound vertebrate,
as much like fifty Others you have seen
as any twolmammals 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 move
ments, which a lecturer takes cOgniz-
ance of, just as a drives notices his
horse cooking his ears, are sure to come
in exactly the same place of your lee
ture, 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,
aud the painted figures the realities-l
have sometimes felt as if were n wan
dering spirit, ami this great, unchang-
ing multi-vertebrate which l faced
night after night, was one ever listen
ing animal, which writhed along after
me wherever | fled, and coiled at my
feet every evening, casting up to me
the same slecpless eyes which thought
had closed with my last drowsy dis
sanitation.