The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-02-28
THE STAGE AND THE PLATFORM.
The Old Time Lecture Seasons-Tel-
images First Appearance.

II AAA y avn AAND a 49, a 80 - 1870
The Old-Time Lecture Seasons-Tel-
images First Appearance.
(CopvriqAi. 1922. bv the United Press.l
NEW YORK, Feb. 27.-There need be no
antagonism between the stage and the plat
form.
There are theaters and theaters, as there
are platforms aud platforms. In olden
days, when the land was in heat, strug-
Cling with passionate insistance on either
side concerning slavery, Its perpetuity, its
extension on one hand and Its extinction on
the other, nearly all the lecture platforms
were occupied by men, now and then by
women, OF pronounced beliefs and opinions,
which they urged with such solidity, with
such fiery zeal, with such power of denun-
citation. and with such manifest personal
interest as to warrant their appellation as
agitators.
Recall the names OF the past and the re-
cent past at that. Beecher, with his mag
niicent Inspirations along the line OF man.
illness in every phase of living; Cough. the
very apostle Of temperance; Wendell PhilS
lips, whose silver tongue dropped eloquenee
never yet surpassed, and always in the
interest Of the best: Theodore Parker,
William Lloyd Garrison, all these names,
you see trend toward common point,
namely: the enfranchisement Of that par
ticulsr part Of Gods creation then in the
chains of the darkness, Of the blackness. Of
human slavery.
Then came the war period, when there
was no such exciting text, and for a period
lecturiDg dropped out. after that Games
galaxy of scientific lectures, illustrious
among whom stood the lamented Proctor.
and thep, intertwined with Beeoher and
Cough aad Proctor aud the readers such as
Dickens, came new element, Riley, Bill
Nye, Gable, and, bursting into marvellous
and almost instantaneous otfiorescence, a
host of olergymen, among the last of which
conspicuous stands my dear old friend De-
Witt Talmage
TALMAGE's FIRST APPEARANCE.
And how the wheels turn roundl
l remember when Talmage first went to
Brooklyn twenty years ago, how the es-
thetic laughed OF him, how they sneered at
him, how they repeated the same old game
OF depreciation that rather conspicuously
failed when tried on his great colaborer,
Beechsr. Well, Talmage was unoouth. he
was pronounced, he did make use Of odd ex-
pressions, his gestures were awkward, his
mouth is large, he did glare and roll his
eyes. and bis voice was like the rasping Of a
saw, but for all that he had the flames of
genius burning In his bosom.
Don't tell me that the man who for
twenty consecutive years holds together
the largest Protestant congregation in the
country twice every Sunday, and as often
otherwise during the week as he sees &c 60
call them together, in such town as
Brooklyn. where on the roll Of its illustrious
preachers stand the names of Beecher.
Bethune. Constantine. Pise, Storrs, Chad
wick and Hodges, has nothing in him.
Flimsy structures fall with their own
weight; babies shrink from strong men:
dudes disappear in the stencil of their own
cigarettes, but the public factors which last
for generations must be substantial, firm,
effective aud universally recognized.
SUCH is DE WITT ia Image TODAY.
His methods are peculiar. He writes bis
sermons and commits them to memory.
This affords him a double advantage.
Dispensing with notes and manuscripts of
any kind, he presents himself to his vast
audience 10 his entirety. From the top of
his head to the sole Of his foot he addresses
his audience, the people. His eye catches
yours, his enthusiasm encounters yours.
bis magnetism is responsibility met.
The man who reads his sermons or bis
addresses deprives his arguments. his
imagery, bis utterances of one-half their
beauty. Talmage thus has the advantage
over the reader OF an apparently extempo-
raneous utterance. On the other hand he
has the advantage over the literal extempo-
raneous speaker of delivering a something
which has been carefully written, carefully
edited and then committed to memory.
BEEcHERs BRIEF NOTES.
For many years, when a reporter on the
New Y ork Times, / was assigned to raport
Beecher's sermons, and the files will show
every Monday morning from one to four
columns OF the great preachers matter fur
nished by my pencil
I uEod IN tako Mr. PaaOharyS 0o&as rhz-.
were ordinarily the merest skeletons. heads.
subheads. Now aud then there would be
pages of written matter, the writing being
large, and easily read at q distance ! don't
recall In all the time an Individual sermon
that was fully written, and noticed that
he rarely got beyond the subdivisions of the
second general head. Now you can readily
see that sermons preached from partial
outworking of an idea must necessarily be
to a certain extent incomplete. This is
obvious.
To make the sermon symmetrical. &C.
| cordtng to the great preachers idea, he
should have used all the ideas that occurred
to hin. when planning. 1t was as though
an architect, having planned a superb edi-
| flee, should spend all the money at his dis
posal and occupy all the ground
| allowed by the porch and foundations,
as 1t were, of the edifice. So Mr..
| ing would find ideas crowding ideas
| and illustrations to such an extent that the
time at his disposal would not permit an
entire rounding out of his pTeconception.
| You get my point, OF course. l am not
| criticising Mr.. Beechers sermons, nor his
mode. 1t would be an impertinence to do
so. simply draw the contrast between
literal extemporaneous effort and apparent
| extemporaneous effort.
|