It was a necessary sequence to the career of this modern Columbus of untrodden discovery, that we find his “first appearance upon any stage” to have been, while so pitiably ignorant as to be barely able to read his own language by spelling the words, and write his own name execrably, as Professor of Elocution!
Admirable! admirable! Why make two bites of a cherry? Why not step at once where no foot of such man ever trod before?
Shade of Blair! Look ye not askance at this daring intruder upon your classic company! He intends you no harm; he only means to re-fuse his brass back into copper s!
In lecturing on Elocution, our Professor, of necessity, gradually learned to read—with fluency, we mean—that is, he could “talk right eout,” like the head boy in a class, though it was in a nasal sing-song, more remarkable for its pietistic intonation than its rhythm. This was, no doubt, in a great measure owing to the facility of whining he had acquired, in his more juvenile experience, as a preacher of some three or four different liberal sects. We class these as mere experiments, as purely preliminary trials of strength, before he entered the true arena of his professorship.
The professorship, to be sure, was self-instituted—self-ordained—and why not self-asserted? There were professors of hair-invigorating oils, professors of dancing, professors of rat-catching, professors of hair-eradication, professors of cough-candy, professors of commercial book-keeping and running-hand writing, professors of flea-powder and bug-extermination—and why not a professor of elocution? The very gutter-mud germinates professors in this free country! They grow like fungi out of wallowing reptiles’ heads; and who need be surprised, in America, at receiving the card of his boot-black, inscribed Professor Brush; his chimney-sweep, Professor Soot; or be appalled by the bloody apparition of a missive from his butcher, emblazoned, “Professor Keyser, Killer!”
No disrespect, mark you, is intended to be either understood or implied, for the gentlemen of the various professions above enumerated, for they are all respectable in their way, and to be respected, outside of their professorships. But that is rather a serious name, as we understand it—one that the world has been accustomed to look up to with veneration—proportioned, until these “modern instances,” to the vast and profound learning which had made it, in the old world, the synonyme of almost patriarchal inspiration—the grand, firm, and stable bulwark of human progress, and its lofty future; of infinite science, and its clear, glorious myths!
This thing of learning seems so easy, that your starveling Yankee perceives no difficulties in the way, and glides into its penetralia “like a book,”—only that he never reads it! He is at once at home in all topography, as much as if he were in Kamtschatka, or the “Tropic Isles.” Furred cloaks or breadfruit leaves are all the same to him; he was born knowing, and of course could not do less than know a great deal more about Kamtschatka and the “Tropic Isles” than their furred and fig-leaved denizens. Brass is the Yankee’s capital, and no wonder they made the great discoveries of copper on Lake Superior, so extensively patronised by New-light sages. It is the offset to California gold; for, while one promises an infinite supply of the substantial basis of commerce and all trade, the other promises to furnish, in perpetuity, the crude material of impudence.
We mean no insinuation in regard to the Spiritual Professor, however much he may have had to do, by “spherical influence,” in precipitating the discovery of this great mine of the metal so much in favor with the sages above mentioned—and the remainder of the sect to which the Professor belonged—the motto of which is, that, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings shall ye be confounded.” Yet we can freely venture to assert, that he had no connection whatever with those unfortunate commercial results, which, in the first place, nearly, if not entirely, swamped the great Patron of the enterprise. The mind of our Professor was necessarily not of that vast reach and generalising comprehension, which could lead to the Behemoth stride and wizard calculation of results, which had enabled his master thus confidently to speculate in so subtle a material.
The operations of our Professor were essentially minified; that is, their sphere and scope had been particularly narrow. He was heroic enough, Heaven knows; but then his heroism was of that dashing character which only required a patron to illustrate and make it known.
Having published a book upon this occult (in his hands) science of elocution, which was, of course, written for him by another party, he suddenly felt himself inspired with a new inspiration.