I remained composed, and did not burst.
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Newburgh, N. Y., January 21.
I lectured in Melrose, near Boston, last night, and had the satisfaction of pleasing a Massachusetts audience for the second time. After the lecture, I had supper with Mr. Nat Goodwin, a very good actor, who is now playing in Boston in a new play by Mr. Steele Mackaye. Mr. Nat Goodwin told many good stories at supper. He can entertain his friends in private as well as he can the public.
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To-night I have appeared in a church, in Newburgh. The minister, who took the chair, had the good sense to refrain from opening the lecture with prayer. There are many who have not the tact necessary to see that praying before a humorous lecture is almost as irreverent as praying before a glass of grog. It is as an artist, however, that I resent that prayer. After the audience have said Amen, it takes them a full quarter of an hour to realize that the lecture is not a sermon; that they are in a church, but not at church; and the whole time their minds are in that undecided state, all your points fall flat and miss fire. Even without the preliminary prayer, I dislike lecturing in a church. The very atmosphere of a church is against the success of a light, humorous lecture, and many a point, which would bring down the house in a theater, will be received only with smiles in a lecture hall, and in respectful silence in a church. An audience is greatly influenced by surroundings.
Now, I must say that the interior of an American church, with its lines of benches, its galleries, and its platform, does not inspire in one such religious feelings as the interior of a European Catholic church. In many American towns, the church is let for meetings, concerts, exhibitions, bazaars, etc., and so far as you can see, there is nothing to distinguish it from an ordinary lecture hall.
Yet it is a church, and both lecturer and audience feel it.
