The herald., 1898-12-25
LIONS FOR REVENUE ONLY
OOOOOoOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOt

America, young, handsome, popular, like
the girl who has millions for her dover, is
courted for her money, and the fact that
she knows it and still looks with favor on
her discriminating slfitors Is proof that
she has generous affections and great
loving heart That she is not loved for her
self alone does not disturb the sweet seren-
lity of her nature or turn her milk of human
kindness into gall. Perhaps she argues that
lecturers may come ard go, but that she,
with her broad ownership of halls to seat
their audiences, will go on forever
From Thackeray, in 1852, to Hall Caine,
the last to visit our shores in the late months
of 1898, is far cry, and distinguished names
crowd themselves between. The friend and
biographer of Thackeray tells us with pro-
prietary sense of gladnessI that all the neces-
sary arrangements for his lecturing tour
had been made without troubling him with
any of the details. When the author Of
VANITY Fair" arrived at Boston he was
taken straight to the fremont house, and
there given his first lesson in eating Ameri-
can oysters. The largest oysters that could
be found were palmed off on the unsusp-
cious guest as extra small, and he was shown
with much ceremony how to eat one. Amid
profound stiffness, broken only by distress
ing sounds of strangling, he was asked how
he felt. He answered with emotion:
Profoundly grateful, and as if l had
swallowed baby"
We are told that there was much hilarity
and sounds of men. laughing and singing far
into midnight. His lectures were well re-
celved by people of culture, who knew their
Ihackeray, and he is said to have been the
most finished and elegant of all lecturers
1T was lucky Friday when first | set
foot in this country" he says, and acknowl-
edged that it was to make pot of money"
Tor his two daughters that he came here at
all. lie was entertained in the most lavish
way wherever he went, yet on his second
visit he experienced such a fit of homesck-
ness that he left the pot of money and future
engagements and took the first steamer bacl,
to his English home.
Charles Dickens came to us in the zenith
OF his fame and power to read his own, writ
irgs as none other could read them There
was thrill OF dramatic power in Dickens
reading which kean himself never surpassed,
and it would have been imagined impossible
to any other man. His face and voice were
made into kind Of stage, and he called his
people upon it as he could see them act
their parts. lie considered the storm scene
in David Copperfield" the best of his writ
ing, but he held audiences spellbound over
Scrogg's ghost or little Tim. He never
came to Chicago, because bit of romance
and tragedy, a real scene, not written in
books OF fiction, lay hidden here on the
threshold of an unhappy home on the North
Side. The pathos oil itlis too deep for tell
ing. Charles Dickens, too, :ectured for
American gold. He wooed America with
the voice of genius and she responded with
lavish hospitality.
Matthew Arnold came to us in 1888, and
presented the singular spectacle of a genius
formed entirely on models of the old world,
as critics declared, endowed with the power
OF writing monographs on the wisdom of
Greece or the medieval rapture of the east,
on the piety of Roman stoicism or Goethes
calm, self-centered poise, who yet had moth
ing with which to face the future but
vague hope of something better than his
own time. His lectures were without vital
ity, magnetism-they did not even arouse
contradiction. sat at one OF them and saw
twenty citizens present who could have held
an audience spelbound. But Matthew
and Light was cult, and it would have
seemed like sort of intellectual blasphemy
to pretend to understand him. His financial
success was satisfactory, and he was enter
taned during his stay. As the mental pen
dulum swings to both extremes, he proved
while here that his rigid panopy of learning
had openings for shafts of comprehension
on lesser scale when on being asked how
lies An1n fb-,&
ing in London, he said:
"Wales says Mary is,a darling.'|
A'bit of human gossip that redeemed him
among "the remnant
Sir Edwin Arnold was another suitor for
the fair dover of America, and him, too.
we received with open arms and gave of our
best. The author of "The Light of Asia"
lifted us to high mental and moral stand
ard, and if we did not appreciate the feast
he spread for our delectation that was be-
cause we are new, and a busy, practical
people But the women of America i'm
proved all the hints he gave, and walked
Indiaward with patient steps, and founded
societies, and if they did not enlighten their
husbandsi in the mystic lore of Buddha they
learned it themselves. And see what our
women are today in their sweet occultism.
Wilbie Collins, friend and collaboration oil
Charles Dickens, came to America and read
or ectured for revenue only, but was not
as successful as his fellow Brton, nor were
his writings as well known, perhaps, as they
have been since the dramatization of '"rhe
New Magdalene," for which he paved the
way. Justin Mccarthy came here in 1872,
and found, in graduate of the silent sister,
the University of Dublin, an old friend who
|entertained him in his modest home on the
west side with Irish wit and hot Scotch
whisky. There was neither telephone, ele-
vators nor electric cars in Chicago then, but
the stockyards We had always with us, and
he went out on Archer avenue to see them,
And now we are promised his son, Justin
Huntly Mccarthy, who was the first to
translate the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
into English prose. If the younger man is
not Handicapped by the mantle of his father
he may win fame and fortune both in his
American tour.
DIR. John Watson-Ian Mediterranean
ten weeks in the United States in 1896. One
continued ovation welcomed him, and Amer
lea should have been richer for his visit, for
love and charity were the texts he expound-
ed He was wise in staying just long enough
and saying just enough to whet our curiosity
for more, and the field remains open to him
for future ventures.
Zangwill, whose fame has been nhenom-