Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-11-06
PoPULARIzING THE LECTURE.

With the oncoming of winter the social
potentialities of community life become
more prominent in the matter of mingling
and grouping for pleasure and entertain
ment. The winter season, by reason of the
inclemency that confines people to a To-
cality, and the long evenings that invite
devices for their pleasant disposal, largely
in its reunions and communings, takes the
form of mere amusement, regardless OF the
entertaining quality. 1t is matter of regret
that only the minor activity OF community
life in the purely social season is of an in
tellectual character.
1t is something very difficult, for in
stance, to maintain in any town or city
of California, at least-in any season, a
course of lectures of the higher order.
Even in the vast population of San Fran
cisco lecture seasons have, as a rule, been
failures. The dancing party, the
theater, the minstrel halls, never fear ri
valry from such quarters. 1t would be
unjustly severe to say this is due to lack
of intellectual taste or desire. 1t is attrib-
utable, in our judgment, to two causes
the unparalleled broad opportunities for
reading by all men and women, and the
error into which the great mass of lecture
and lyceum homogeneous fall, of going to
the extreme in choosing severity of method
for the speakers; for We note that the
lecture course addressed to everyday needs,
to the fancy, the imagination, and that
runs upon what might be termed, for lack
of a better phrase, the popular plane, sell
dom fails to draw out large audiences.
Let travelling lecturer appear who
talks Witty and incisively to the people of
their physical ailments and needs, and il
illustrates his themes by an elaborate display
of anatomical subjects, diagrams,
etc, and who assumes to give
advice that will in some respect
relate to the mysteries of life, and he will
meet with popular and paying response.
The most ordinarily thrown-together
commonplace about travel and foreign
scenery, or war, or city life, backed by
stereopticon views flashed upon a broad
canvas, will insure crowded houses. Bat
the lecturer upon political economy, or
the speaker who proposes to discuss men
tai problems, or to dwell upon the develop
ment of culture and the progress of civili-
cation, or systems of education, or the
needs of new country, or the schools Of
art, or indeed upon the advance in scien-
tifc research and discovery will, in this
State at least, find but very limited num-
Der who will care to hear him. The peo
pie, we must assume, on. all these and like
subjects read to the full of their tastes,
and when ii comes to the question of an
evening OUT prefer, in the main, intellect
ual or purely physical amusement, rather
than intellectual entertainment and stimu
liant. The public library, the wealth of
magazine literature, the multitude OF
books and their cheapness, the unques-
toned augmentation of the reading taste
as evidenced by the marvellous growth of
the book-making business, supplant the
rostrum and belittle the old-time lyceum
lecture courses. And this truth is now
patent to every observer.
Those who propose to engage the peo-
pie in winter evening enjoyments outside
the home, must be driven to the conclu-
sion that the appeal for audiences must be
made upon less exalted, not TO say less
sober plane than was occupied in even the
last decade Popular entertainments
have come to mean those that do not call
for greatly vigorous exercise of the in
telleetual powers; that are attractive be-
cause curious, novel ard addressing other
than the mental senses. Fortunately for
science, art, literature, history, music,
medicine, and all similar topics, the aids
of science and art are such that they can
all be popularized and made to draw
in the purely managerial meaning of the
word. What our town and city and
village literary and scientific bureaus need
to do therefore, is to get sway from the
heavy, the purely scholarly methods of
entertainment, ard adopt those that popu-
larize. Andthere are no subjects to-day, out