Then came the suggestion from Charles M. Ellis, a Boston merchant, that Parker quit sleepy Roxbury and defy classic Boston by renting the Melodeon Theater and stating his views, instead of having them retailed on the street from mouth to mouth. If the orthodox Congregationalists wanted war, why let it begin there. The rent for the theater was thirty dollars a day; but a few friends plunged, rented the theater, and notified Parker that he must do the rest.
Would any one come—that was the question. And Sunday at eleven A. M. the question answered itself. Then the proposition was—would they come again? And this like all other propositions was answered by time.
The people were hungry for truth—the seats were filled.
What began as a simple experiment became a fixed fact. Boston needed
Theodore Parker.
An organization was effected, and after much discussion a name was selected, "The Twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston." And the Orthodox Congregationalists raised a howl of protest. They showed that Parker was not a Congregationalist at all, and the Parkerites protested that they were the only genuine sure-enoughs, and anyway, there was no copyright on the word. Congregational Societies were independent bodies, and any group of people could organize one who chose.
In the meantime the society flourished, advertised both by its loving friends and by its frenzied enemies.
Parker grew with the place. The Melodeon was found too small, and
Music-Hall was secured.
The audience increased, and the prophets who had prophesied failure waited in vain to say, "I told you so."
There sprang up a demand for Parker's services in the Lyceum lecture- field. People who could not go to Boston wanted Parker to come to them. His fee was one hundred dollars a lecture, and this at a time when Emerson could be hired for fifty.
Parker had at first received six hundred dollars a year at Roxbury, then this had gradually been increased to one thousand a year.