The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1892-07-01
The Old Time Lecture Platform.

The Old Time Lecture Platform.
1t is enough to make young people
wish they had lived in war time to read
Anna Dickinson's newspaper letter about
"Preaching and Fighting" from 1862 to
1865. Anna Dickinson has still fire and
an enthusiasm that belonged to her more
than to any other speaker of her time,
and they are always catching.
She mentions her own first speech,
made when she was schoolgirl. II
was an indignant protest against the
assertion of q man who saiN something
pf this kind;
"My daughters could never be doc
tors, lawyers, or priests or orators. And
my daughters are as good and bright as
any other mans"
Like tornado, before she herself
knew what she was about Anna Dick
inson fell upon that man, She proved
at the age Of sixteen that ut least one
mans daughter was born orator. The
storm of her indignation swept over
him and must have left him breathless,
for Annals first speech concluded thus:
"As you yourself have summed it up,
your daughters are fools. In heavens
name what else is to be expected Of the
daughters of such father"
Of the lecturer of thirty years ago
Anna writes:
The lyceum platform was a lay pulpit. The
men who came to 1t had a message to speak,
and unrest, argument and education were the
sure sequences.
1t was inevitable that these world thinkers
and orators-the most of them known across
two continents-sh should either by sympathetic
fusion or by logical following find themselves
in the van of every battle that had to be
fought for woman, for labor, for social reform,
for the lettering Of the human race and for
the protection even of the dumb. No human
being can make consistent and exhaustive
argument for the rights Of human being as
human being, regardless of sex, color, race
or condition, who will not find him or herself
bound by a thousand links in as many direc.
tons to the welfare and uplifting of the whole
human kind.
Among the lecturers of that glorious
old day were Charles Sumner, Wendell
Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Horace
Mann, Bayard Taylor and Horace Gree
ley. Whom have we instead of them
today? "Today has no lecture plat
FORM" answers Miss Dickinson. "There
are amusement purveyors scattered
through great many towns"
Yet GaOrpa w Wapdlipu hi,,,colf
successful speaker, tells us there never
were SO many lecturers making good
living on the platform as there are to-
day. But how tame, how mean that
statement sounds when read beside Anna
Dickinson's Renaissance of what q
speech with man behind it could do"
as described in the following mention
of one of the last utterances ever given
by Owen Lovejoy:
What "a shout! All the made enthusiasm at
Minneapolis would sound slight beside the
thunder that broke from the hearts and not
| merely the Threats of the men as they roared
"Lovejoy! Lovejoy!" He stood for moment,
slowly shaking his leonine head, and with
such rush of emotion that no words could
come, then the voice that was like the roll of
an organ sounded FORTH
II cannot! l cannot! must not be SILENT
should expect the lightnings of the Almighty
TO blast me where stand did allow such in
fanny to go unwhipt of Justice"
i think no man nor woman went out of the
hall that night with any dimness of vision as
to what justice in their war and to humanity
meant-not one who had not taken a step
nearer to the eternal verities.