How came she to write a book like that? Simply because she had noticed so closely, for her brother"s sake, that from the nib of her pen flowed those beautiful descriptions as naturally as the water ripples down the mountain-side. That is always so. No man ever gives himself for others"
good in the right spirit without receiving "a hundredfold more in this present time."
I will go one step farther with this thought. We do need great painters, but we don"t want more painters like that man who painted the Israelites coming out of Egypt, representing them with muskets on their shoulders with U.S. on the b.u.t.ts.
But more than artists we need great musicians. There is an awful need of music. We have too much noise, but very little real music. Did you ever think how little you have? Do you suppose a true musician is simply a man who roars down to low B and squeals to high C? What an awful need there is of the music which refines the heart, brightens the mind; that brings glory and heaven down to men. I have not the s.p.a.ce here to expand upon that thought--the awful need of humanity for real music. But we don"t get it. I do not know why it is. I am not able to explain. But perhaps I can hint at what music is.
At Yale I had to earn my own living, and that is why, for these forty-four years, I have been lecturing exclusively to help young men secure their college education. I arose at four o"clock and worked in the New Haven House from four to eight to get the "come backs" from the breakfast table so that my brother and I could live. Some days, however, I digged potatoes in the afternoon, and taught music in the evening, although the former was my proper occupation. Sometimes my music scholars would invite me in to play something to entertain their company, and I noticed the louder I played the louder they talked. I often said, "What a low standard of musical culture there is in New Haven!" But I learned something after I left college. I learned I was not a musician.
Had I been a musician they would have listened. That is the only test of real music. There is no other.
If you sing and every one whispers, or you play and every one talks, it is because you are not a musician. I dare tell it to you here, when I would not dare say it to you individually if we were alone. There is no person on earth who gets so many lies to the square inch as a person who drums on a piano.
What is music? Music may be wholly a personal matter and be called music. I remember Major Snow, of my native town, who used to listen to the filing of the saw at the sawmill. How that did screech and scratch until it hurt to our toes! We asked the old major why he went down to the mill Sat.u.r.day, when he could go any other day. He said: "Oh, boys, you do not understand it. When I was young I worked in a sawmill and I come down here to hear them file that saw. It reminds me of the good old days. It is music to me." He was "educated up" to that standard where filing of a saw was music to him, and so men may be educated in all manner of ways in so-called music. But it is not the real music.
What is true music? I went to a beautiful church in New York to exchange with the pastor, and an officer of the church came down the aisle as I walked in and said to me, "Sir, the choir always opens the service."
They did; they opened it! I sat down on the pulpit sofa and waited an embarra.s.singly long time for something to be done up there. The choir roosted on a shelf over my head. The soprano earned $4,000 a year, and I was anxious to hear her. Soon I heard the rustle of silk up there, and one or two little giggles. Then the soprano began. She struck the lowest note her cultivated voice could possibly touch, and then she began to wind, or rather, corkscrew, her way up and up and up, out of sight--and she stayed up there. Then the second ba.s.s began and wound his way down, down, down--down to the Hades of sound--and he stayed down there.
Now, was that music? Was it worship? Why, if I had stood in that sacred place and positively sworn at the people it would not have been greater sacrilege than that exhibition up on that shelf! Do you think the living G.o.d is to be worshiped by a high-flying, pyrotechnic, trapeze performance in acoustics? Neither worship nor music was there. Music does not consist of a high-flying circus trapeze performance in acoustics.
What is music? Music is such a combination of sound as moves the heart to holier emotions, quickens the brain to brighter thoughts, and moves the whole man on to n.o.bler deeds. That is music. Nothing else is music.
You can only find out whether you are a musician or not by _taking notice_, while you sing, whether you hold the attention of the people, and whether you influence their memory and their after character.
V
NEED OF ORATORS
We need great orators. The need is something alarming. I am often called to lecture at the Chautauquas and the lyceums, and the committees often urge me to recommend some man or woman who will fill a place on the public platform. They offer marvelous rewards for those who will do that well. There are no men or women alive, not one known in our land to-day, who could be called a great orator. When I began to lecture, fifty-eight years ago, there were Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, Edward Everett, the greatest orator of his day--and John B. Gough. I esteem it a great honor to have been induced by Mr. Gough to go on the lecture platform. They are all gone, and no successors have appeared.
Liberty and oratory have ever gone together, and always will, hence the need of oratory is especially pressing now.
Why don"t we have orators? The editors say "because the newspaper has come in and goes into every home, and a man on Sunday will read a better sermon in his newspaper than ever was delivered, and will save paying the minister and having trouble with the choir." Now, that time will never come. You will never get along without real orators, no matter how many newspapers you may have. I respect the press. I have had something to do with its work in my lifetime. I have worked upon and owned a daily newspaper. But I must say that there is something, after all, in the shake of a living man"s finger, something in the flash of his eye, something in the stamp of his foot, but vastly more in his mesmeric power, which no cold type will ever express! You never can fully express the living man in cold lead.
Why don"t we have great orators? I don"t think the newspapers are in the way. But other people say to me. "It is the injurious effect of the modern school of elocution, which is now called "the school of oratory."" It has only been a few years since all these elocutionary schools changed their names to "schools of oratory" and consequently damaged the prospect of our country. The school of elocution may not be a school of oratory at all. It may be a hindrance to oratory; it depends on what the teaching is. There is a wide difference between elocution and real oratory. Elocution is an art of expression, which every teacher has, and he teaches his own art. But oratory is the great science of successful speech. The man who gets what he pleads for is an orator, no matter how he calls. If you call a dog and he comes, that is oratory. If he runs away, that is elocution!
Why don"t we have greater orators? These schools of elocution remind me of an incident which occurred about seventeen years ago. I don"t believe I will hurt any one"s feelings now by mentioning it. The professor of elocution was sick one day, and the boys came after me. They wanted me to come because the teacher was away, and I resolved to go and entertain that cla.s.s and let it pa.s.s for a recitation. Professors often do that.
When I came into the cla.s.s-room, I said to the boy on the front seat: "What was the last lesson you had in elocution?" One of the boys said:
"Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers; If Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers, Where are the six pecks of pickled peppers which Peter Piper picked?"
That is "lip exercise" in elocution. I said to that young man, "I will not teach elocution. But I wish you would come up and deliver that to this cla.s.s just as you would to an audience." The boy came up and put his toes together, and his hands by his side, for he had not reached the study of gesture. He yelled very rapidly and loudly:
"Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers; If Peter Piper, piping, picked six pecks of pickled peppers, Where are the pecks of pickled peppers which Peter Piper picked?"
It was elocution, but it was not oratory. I had trouble in getting up another boy, but I finally did. He thought that oratory consisted entirely in elocutionary "inflections," so he delivered it:
"Peter Piper picked six pecks of pickled peppers; If Peter piping picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where"s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?"
(With marked raising and lowering of the voice.)
It sounded like an old rooster in the barn in the morning. But being elocution, it was not oratory.
But the most ill.u.s.trative and most absurd speech I ever heard was by a visitor in that cla.s.s that day. He was sitting over near the aisle, and one of the students came and whispered to me: "That young man has graduated from an Eastern school of elocution, and he is going to act the heavy parts in tragedy upon the stage. He is a great elocutionist, and won"t you get him to recite something to the cla.s.s?" I fell into the trap, and went down to the young man, and said: "I understand you are an elocutionist. Will you come up and recite something for the cla.s.s?"
As soon as he looked up at me I saw by his eyes there was something the matter with his head. I do not know just what, but things have happened since that make it no unkindness to refer to him the way I do. I said: "Please come up and recite something," and he replied: "Shall I recite the same thing the young men have been reciting?" I said, "You don"t need to do that; take anything." He left his gold-headed cane--the best part of him--on the floor, and then he came up to the platform and leaned on the table and said to me: "Shall I recite the same thing the young men have been reciting?" I said: "You can if you wish. You are perfectly free to take anything you choose. The professor is away, anyhow. When the cat is away the mice will play."
Then he began to prepare himself for that recitation. I never saw such behavior in my life. He pulled up his sleeves, brushed back his hair, shook himself, moved the table away forward, and I slid far back by the door and left the platform open, for I didn"t know what he was going to do next. Then he gave the selection:
"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper-r-rs; If Peter Piper, piping piper, picked a peck of pickled pepper-r-r-rs, Where"s the peck of pickled pepper-r-r-rs Peter Piper pickle-picker-r-r picked?"
He rolled in a flutter the letter "r" in each line. That cla.s.s looked up with awe, and applauded until he repeated it. It was still elocution, but it was not oratory. He thought that oratory consisted of rolling the "r"s" and rolling himself. That is not oratory.
Where do they learn oratory? They learn it in the old-fashioned school-house, from that old hen at the kitchen door, in some back office, in some hall, or some church where young men or women get together and debate, saying naturally the things they mean, and then _take notice_ of the effects of what they debate upon, the conviction or after action of those who listen. That is the place to observe. You must _take notice_ if you are to be a great orator.
The greatest orator of the future will be a woman. It has not been two months since the management of a women"s Chautauqua said, "We could give $40,000 a year to any woman who will be a natural woman on the platform." They would make money at $40,000 a year if they hired a woman who would be a real woman. The trouble is that when women get on the platform they try to sing ba.s.s or try to speak as a man speaks. And there is such a need for women orators now! I get provoked about it when I think. Why isn"t there a great woman orator like Mrs. Livermore now when she is needed so much?
VI
WOMAN"S INFLUENCE
If women vote they will be of little account unless they are leaders. It is of no special advantage to the voter to ignorantly put a piece of paper in a box. But it is of great account to influence ten thousand votes. That is what women must do if they are going to exercise their right under suffrage--they must be the influence behind the throne, not merely a voter.
When I was a boy in the district school a subst.i.tute teacher came in, and we all loved that little woman. We would do anything she asked us to do. One day that subst.i.tute teacher, who could not get a first-cla.s.s certificate, copied a verse of a poem and asked me to read it:
If you cannot on the ocean Sail among the swiftest fleet: Rocking on the mighty billows, Laughing at the storms you meet.
She asked me to read it once, and then she turned the paper over and said, "Now, Russell, repeat it." I said, "I have not learned it by heart." Said she: "Don"t learn it by heart. I will try again." So she wrote the second verse:
If you are too weak to journey Up the mountain steep and high.
Then she said to me, "Now, Russell, read it through once, and notice carefully each word, and don"t look back at a word a second time." I know not now why she demanded that; I have looked in many books of psychology and in many places to find out. I have no explanation of this, and I ask you to think for me, for this is the fact. I took the second verse and read it through as she told me to do. Then she turned it over and said, "Please repeat it." I said, "I cannot repeat it; I have not learned it by heart." She replied: "Don"t you say that again.
Just shut your eyes and make a mental effort to see those verses, and then read it."
I shut my eyes and said, "Oh, it is all dark." Then she seemed very much disturbed and said: "Now, Russell, don"t say that. Won"t you try to do what I ask you to do?"
I thought the little woman was going to cry, so I said, "Yes, I will do the best I can." She said, "Shut your eyes again and make a determined effort, with your eyes shut, to see that poetry just as though it were right before you." I shut my eyes and made that effort, and saw it as distinctly as though I had held it before my open eyes. So long as my eyes were shut I could see the two verses, and I read it all through, word for word, and I read it backward, word for word, to the beginning.
I thought I had seen a ghost. I went home and told my father what had happened, and he rushed down from the pasture to the school-house and said to the teacher:
"If you indulge again in your foolish superst.i.tions you will never teach in that school-house again."
It must have been uncomfortable for her, and her secret went down to the grave with her, as far as I know. Yet what would I not give if I could place before the world now what that little girl knew. All our educational inst.i.tutions, for which I have labored all these years, would be as nothing compared with that one secret if I could give it to you--that secret of being able to look upon a scene and shut"s one"s eyes and bring it all back again, study it in detail.