many, and may occasionally face one hereafter. But I tell you the
AVERAGE intellect of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is

not very high. It may be sound and safe, so far as it goes, but it
is not very rapid or profound. A lecture ought to be something

which all can understand, about something which interests
everybody. I think, that, if any experiencedlecturer gives you a

different account from this, it will probably be one of those
eloquent or forcible speakers who hold an audience by the charm of

their manner, whatever they talk about, - even when they don't talk
very well.

But an AVERAGE, which was what I meant to speak about, is one of
the most extraordinary subjects of observation and study. It is

awful in its uniformity, in its automatic necessity of action. Two
communities of ants or bees are exactly alike in all their actions,

so far as we can see. Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each,
are so nearly alike, that they are absolutely undistinguishable in

many cases by any definite mark, and there is nothing but the place
and time by which one can tell the "remarkably intelligent

audience" of a town in New York or Ohio from one in any New England
town of similar size. Of course, if any principle of selection has

come in, as in those special associations of young men which are
common in cities, it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage.

But let there be no such interfering circumstances, and one knows
pretty well even the look the audience will have, before he goes

in. Front seats: a few old folk, - shiny-headed, - slant up best
ear towards the speaker, - drop off asleep after a while, when the

air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright
women's faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but

toward the front - (pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that.)
Here and there a countenance, sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen

pretty female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs
of young people, - happy, but not always very attentive. Boys, in

the background, more or less quiet. Dull faces here, there, - in
how many places! I don't say dull PEOPLE, but faces without a ray

of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what kill the
lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and stony

lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him; - that is the
chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over.

They render LATENT any amount of vital caloric; they act on our
minds as those cold-blooded creatures I was talking about act on

our hearts.
Out of all these inevitable elements the audience is generated, - a

great compound vertebrate, as much like fifty others you have seen
as any two mammals of the same species are like each other. Each

audience laughs, and each cries, in just the same places of your
lecture; that is, if you make one laugh or cry, you make all. Even

those little indescribablemovements which a lecturer takes
cognizance of, just as a driver notices his horse's cocking his

ears, are sure to come in exactly the same place of your lecture
always. I declare to you, that as the monk said about the picture

in the convent, - that he sometimes thought the living tenants were
the shadows, and the painted figures the realities, - I have

sometimes felt as if I were a wandering spirit, and this great
unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night after night was one

ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me wherever I
fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, turning up to me the

same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my last
drowsy incantation!

- Oh, yes! A thousand kindly and courteous acts, - a thousand
faces that melted individually out of my recollection as the April

snow melts, but only to steal away and find the beds of flowers
whose roots are memory, but which blossom in poetry and dreams. I

am not ungrateful, nor unconscious of all the good feeling and
intelligence everywhere to be met with through the vast parish to

which the lecturer ministers. But when I set forth, leading a
string of my mind's daughters to market, as the country-folk fetch

in their strings of horses - Pardon me, that was a coarse fellow
who sneered at the sympathy wasted on an unhappylecturer, as if,

because he was decently paid for his services, he had therefore
sold his sensibilities. - Family men get dreadfullyhomesick. In

the remote and bleak village the heart returns to the red blaze of
the logs in one's fireplace at home.

"There are his young barbarians all at play," -
if he owns any youthful savages. - No, the world has a million

roosts for a man, but only one nest.
- It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which an appeal is always

made in all discussions. The men of facts wait their turn in grim
silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the

consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a
revolver gives the individual thus armed. When a person is really

full of information, and does not abuse it to crush conversation,
his part is to that of the real talkers what the instrumental

accompaniment is in a trio or quartette of vocalists.
- What do I mean by the real talkers? - Why, the people with fresh

ideas, of course, and plenty of good warm words to dress them in.
Facts always yield the place of honor, in conversation, to thoughts

about facts; but if a false note is uttered, down comes the finger
on the key and the man of facts asserts his true dignity. I have

known three of these men of facts, at least, who were always
formidable, - and one of them was tyrannical.

- Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appearance on a particular
occasion; but these men knew something about almost everything, and

never made mistakes. - He? VENEERS in first-rate style. The
mahogany scales off now and then in spots, and then you see the

cheap light stuff - I found - very fine in conversational
information, the other day when we were in company. The talk ran

upon mountains. He was wonderfully well acquainted with the
leading facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and the Appalachians;

he had nothing in particular to say about Ararat, Ben Nevis, and
various other mountains that were mentioned. By and by some

Revolutionary anecdote came up, and he showed singular familiarity
with the lives of the Adamses, and gave many details relating to

Major Andre. A point of Natural History being suggested, he gave
an excellent account of the air-bladder of fishes. He was very

full upon the subject of agriculture, but retired from the
conversation when horticulture was introduced in the discussion.

So he seemed well acquainted with the geology of anthracite, but
did not pretend to know anything of other kinds of coal. There was

something so odd about the extent and limitations of his knowledge,
that I suspected all at once what might be the meaning of it, and

waited till I got an opportunity. - Have you seen the "New American
Cyclopaedia?" said I. - I have, he replied; I received an early

copy. - How far does it go? - He turned red, and answered, - To
Araguay. - Oh, said I to myself, - not quite so far as Ararat; -

that is the reason he knew nothing about it; but he must have read
all the rest straight through, and, if he can remember what is in

this volume until he has read all those that are to come, he will
know more than I ever thought he would.

Since I had this experience, I hear that somebody else has related
a similar story. I didn't borrow it, for all that. - I made a

comparison at table some time since, which has often been quoted
and received many compliments. It was that of the mind of a bigot

to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it
contracts. The simile is a very obvious, and, I suppose I may now

say, a happy one; for it has just been shown me that it occurs in a
Preface to certain Political Poems of Thomas Moore's published long

before my remark was repeated. When a person of fair character for
literary honesty uses an image, such as another has employed before

him, the presumption is, that he has struck upon it independently,
or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his own.

It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, whether a
comparison which suddenly suggests itself is a new conception or a

recollection. I told you the other day that I never wrote a line
of verse that seemed to me comparatively good, but it appeared old

at once, and often as if it had been borrowed. But I confess I
never suspected the above comparison of being old, except from the

fact of its obviousness. It is proper, however, that I proceed by
a formalinstrument to relinquish all claim to any property in an