Arizona republican., 1891-11-14
LECTURING THAT PAYS.

The two things most to be dreaded by the public lecturer, according to George R. Vending, in The Globe-Democrat, are the introducing fiend and the spare room business. No lecture committees can ever understand, apparently, that lecturer wants to go to hotel and have bis time to himself, in peace and quiet, before he speaks. There are some good souls who even insist on making large dinner or tea party and inviting all the notables of the place to call on the speaker just before the hour for the greatest effort of his life. These people and those who insist on making lec- turer take the spare room in private house and entertain company will un- doubtedly go when they die to the same place with the girl who quickens the kitchen fire with kerosene
 Mir. Vending assures us that lectur- ing is not dying out, that on the con- trary it was never more prosperous. At present annually there are certainly not less than 5,OOO addresses delivered in lecture courses every year. The busi- ness is mainly in the hands of four lec- ture bureaus that make engagements for the speakers and make charge for advertising and commission. These are the Redpath of Boston and Chicago, the Star of New York, Slayton of Chicago and New York and Major Ponds bu- reau of New York
 Mir. Vending gives the names of nearly 900 persons who make much or all of their living in the lecture field, and in some cases it is handsome liv- ing, in his own for instance. He him self has spoken 1900 nights in seven years. The prices range all the way from $50 down to s25 for single lecture. Of the list of speakers given, the time of most of them is fairly we'll occupied. and dozen of them have more engage ments than they can fill It is little odd, the number of preachers on the list. There are over fifty who have time from their pastoral labor to devote to pay lec- lures, but not a single doctor. A phy- sician, to practice his profession success fully, cannot travel and leave his ps- tients at home.
 There are quite as good lecturers now as there were twenty-five years ago, in the judgment of our writer Miss Will lard and Kate Field are unsurpassed among women, and, excepting only Beecher, there are preacher lecturers now as eloquent as ever thrilled null titude by words from the platform. One word of advice is dropped to local lecture committees that is worth needing: Do not start your couse unless you have sold tickets enough beforehand to cover all expenses. Never depend at all on what you may take in at the door on the lecture evening.
 Who was the greatest lecturer ever in America; Wendell Phillips, says MT. Vending.
 What Edison Is About.
 He can crush whole mountain, he says, by his new electrical mining idea. He will no longer have mines worked by the slow and painful process of fol- lowing veins He will simply blast the whole mountain down at one blow and then claw the mineral out of its ruins. Furthermore, he is going to have that kinetograph ready to astonish foreigners and natives at the Worlds fair by its ability to reproduce before an audience an entire opera, figures. costumes, ges- lures, singing and all.
 He has a new electric street railway that will take the place of every other now in existence. It will need no stor- age battery and no trolley arms over head. There will be simply plain cleo tric motors under the cars and they will take the current from the common rails that do duty for street cars already. How this is done is Mir. Edison's secret. Moreover, while there comes from the rails sufficient current to propel street car fast enough for the most exacting passengers, it will be so arranged that it will not shock fly, and that, too, is the Wizards secret
 He will have a street railway in opera tion soon, exhibiting his invention. Speaking of the cable cars which will shortly take the place of the present ones drawn by horse power on Broadway, New York, Mir. Edison remarked to a World reporter:
 They onght to have waited. told them they should hold on a bit. After all this digging and dltching they'll have their cable road, and by that time my system will be in operation In some other city at much less expense and with much more satisfactory results. l could sim ply have gone to work and taken that Broad way road as it once was. and could have put