The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-01-04
AUTHORS.
Those Who Have Visited
the United States.

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 suitors is a proof that
she has generous affections and a great
loving heart. That she is not loved for
herself alone does not disturb the sweet
serenity of her nature or turn her milk of
human kindness into gall. Perhaps she
argues that her lecturers may come and
go, but that she, with her broad ownership
of halls to seat their audiences, will go on
forever.
From Thackeray in 1852 to Hall Game.
the last to visit our shores in the late
months of 1898, is a far cry, and distln-
guished names crowd themselves between.
The friend and biographer of Thackeray
tells us with a proprietary sense of glad
ness that all the necessary arrangements
for his lecturing tour had been made with
out troubling him with any of the details,
writes correspondent of the Chicago
Times Herald. When the author of Van
ity Fair arrived at Boston he was taken
straight to the fremont House, and there
given his first lesson in eating American
oysters. The largest oysters that could be
found were palmed off on the unsuspicious
guest as extra small, and he was shown
with much ceremony how to eat one. We
are told that there was much hiarity and
sounds of men laughing and singing far
into midnight. His lectures were well re-
ceived by people of culture, who knew
their Thackeray, and he is said to have
been the most finished and elegant of all
lecturers.
1T was a lucky Friday when first / set
foot in this country" he says, and ac-
knowledged that it was to make pot of
money for his two daughters that he
came here at all. He was entertained in
the most lavish way wherever he went.
yet on his second visit he experienced
such a fit of inconsistencies that he left the
pot of money and future engagements and
home.
Charles Dickens came to us in the zenith
OF his fame and power to read his own
writings as none other could read them
There was a thrill of dramatic power in
Dickens reading which Kean himself
never surpassed, and it would have been
imagined imossible to any other man. His
face and voice were made into kind of
stage, and he called his people upon 1t
as he could see them act their parts. He
considered the storm scene in David
SSoppssrneld'' the best of his writing. but
he ne held audiences spell-bound over
Scrooge's ghost of Little Tim. He never
game 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 of 1t is too deep
for telling. Charles Dickens, too, lee
tured for American gold. He wooed
America with the voice of genius, and
she responded with lavish hospitality
Matthew Arnold came to us in 1858. and
presented the singular spectacle of gem
JUS 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 rap
stoicism. or Goethe's calm, self-coored
poise, who yet had nothing with which to
face the future but vague hope of some
thing better than his own time. His lee
xrit lew,
they did not even arouse contradiction.
sat at one of them, and saw twenty citi-
zens present. who could have held an au-
dience spell-bound. But Matthew Arnold
with his atmosphere of sweetness and
light was cult, and it would have
seemed like a sort of intellectual bias
phemy to pretend to understand him. His
financial success was satisfactory, and he
was entertained during his stay.
Sir Edwin Arnold was another sutton
for the fair dover of America, and him,
of our best. The author of THE Light
of Asia" lifted us to a high mental and
moral standard, and If we did not appre-
cate the feast he spread for our delecta-
ton, that was because we are new and
busy, practical people. But the women of
America improved all the hints he gave,
and walked Indiaward with patient steps,
and founded societies, and if they did not
enlighten their husbands in the mystic
lore of Buddha, they learned it them
selves. And see what our women are to-
ueN III lhelE sweet OCCulLlS1l.
Wtlkie Collins. friend and collaboration
OF Charles Dickens, came to America and
read or lectured for revenue only but was
not as successful as his fellow Briton. nor
were his writings as well known, perhaps,
ase they have been since the dramatiza-
ton of THE New Magdalene." for which
ne 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, elevators or electric car
IN Chicago then, but the stockyards we
mad always with u.s. and he went out on
Archer avenue to see them. And now we
are promised his son, Justin Huntley Nc
earthly. who was the first to translate the
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam into English
prose-. If the younger man is not handi-
capped by the mantle of his father he
may win fame and fortune both in his
American tour.
DR.. John Watson-Ian Maclaren-spent
ten weeks in the United States in 1896 One
continued ovation welcomed him and
America should have been richer for his
visit, for love and charity were the texts
he expounded. He was wise in staying
to whet our curiosity for more, and the
lures.
zangwill, whose fame has been phe-
nomenal, and who is Jew of the most
dlsGlnguished type, followed his books,
and Is the present years contribution to
the lecture platform, man of pleasing
personality, yet alien to Americans in his
tastes and his religion, but. of intellectual
congeniality and possessed of a cynical
humor that has a bitter flavor of orig
lnality. To have heard Israel Zangwill
among his own people in the synagogue
Is thing worth remembering. He is eu-
sive and yelvet-voiced. and his face and
bearing silhouette themselves on the
memory with an almost painful vague
ness that is haunting and persistent
Perhaps there is a fatality in his best
pun, made at the expense of a contempo-
rary He went up like Crockett and came
down like a Stickit.'
Hall Caine is the latest notable from
across the water to read his own work
and assimilate our almighty dollars He
IS Manxman, and people are as curious
to see him as If he were Manx cat with
TWO tails Women mostly compose his
audiences, and he has said that women in
America have a very good time They
90, MI Game and they know how to
make It for themselves.
Rudyard Kipling has the distinction of
never having lectured in America, but he
married daughter of America, and took
ner over seas with him, and confines his
lecture ability to the domestic circle