The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, March 1885

Transcriber’s Note: This cover has been created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The Chautauquan.
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.
Vol. V. MARCH, 1885. No. 6.
President , Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Chancellor , J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors , The Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., the Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.; Edward Everett Hale. Office Secretary , Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary , Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.
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BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.
With such a text as the monster curse of intemperance and its impressive practical lessons, a slight commentary would suffice to turn thousands of young observers into zealous champions of our cause, just as in Germany a few years of gymnastic training have turned nearly every young man into an advocate of physical education. The work begun in the school room should be continued on the lecture platform, but we should not dissemble the truth that in a crowded hall ninety per cent. of the visitors have generally come to hear an orator rather than a teacher, and enjoy an eloquence that stirs up their barrenest emotions as much as if it had fertilized the soil of their intelligence, just as the unrepentant gamesters of a Swiss watering place used to applaud the sensational passages of a drama written expressly to set forth the evils of the gambling hell. Enthusiasm and impressiveness are valuable qualifications of a public speaker, but he should possess the talent of making those agencies the vehicles of instruction. The great mediæval reformers, as well as certain political agitators of a later age, owe their success to their natural or acquired skill in the act of stirring their hearers into an intellectual ferment that proved the leaven of a whole community—for that skill is a talent that can be developed on a basis of pure common sense and should be more assiduously cultivated for the purposes of our reform. A modern philanthropist could hardly confer a greater benefit on his fellow-citizens than by founding a professorship of temperance, or endowing a college with the special condition of a proviso for a weekly lecture on such topics as “The Stimulant Delusion,” “Alcoholism,” “The History of the Temperance Movement.”