The lecture was to be given in a building which stood somewhere in Summer Street. We were to sell the tickets to our friends and were to share in the profits. And with what will we went forth! A stranger might have thought that the city had been invaded by a gang of hold-up men. Well, the night came. We were present, eighteen of us. The editor and the business manager were absent, having been invited to attend a luncheon given by a politician. But eighteen of us were there to hear that great out-rush of the human mind. It may have been that the learning was too deep for us, that the humor was too skilfully hidden. There was a large audience and at first there was much applause, but it dropped off along about the second round. At the close, however, there came something to arouse our interest. Upon the table the lecturer emptied about a bushel of cubes wrapped in paper. “Each one of these cubes contains a piece of soap,” said he. “It is the finest that has ever been made. And this is the offer that I shall make to you: I shall sell these cubes at twenty-five cents each, and in at least half of the papers is contained a yearly subscription to the Evening Mail, a paper which Mr. Watterson declares is the freest and best-written journal in America. He himself is thinking of taking the editorship of it on the first day of next July. Let us open a few of these papers. Ah, we here have a subscription, here is another—another—why, there are no end of them. I will now pass out among you.”
They bought his soap. He was giving our paper a boost and none save a great man could do that. Surely, the day of our prosperity was about to dawn. “I will be around early in the morning to settle for the advertisement, the tickets and the many subscriptions,” he said to one of us. “And now don’t think me presumptuous in what I said. Watterson has his eye on this paper.”
He did not come around the next day. We called on the business manager and he said that no arrangements for subscriptions had been made with him. We spoke to the editor and he sighed. Then, and for days afterward, there came broken streams of people with orders for yearly subscriptions. It was difficult to explain. The most of our stockholders had been present and had heard the promises made by Major DeMaine. So we dozed off into the bed prepared by the sheriff.
The last time I saw the editor he took my hand with a sigh and said: “It was a great pity that I went to that political luncheon. Ah, politics, ruination of mighty empires!”
Years afterward, in company with Col. Zeb. Ward, I was going through the Arkansas penitentiary. Near the wall I observed an oldish man washing a buggy. He had a familiar look, in spite of his stripes, and I spoke to Colonel Ward concerning him. “He is known as Commodore Sassafrac,” said the Colonel. “He got up a great land scheme down in the bottoms—told the negroes that he had the management of the great Mexican war land claim. Seventy million acres were set aside for the colored citizens, and all they had to do was to show an order from the Commodore, which he gave for five dollars apiece.”
I went up to him and spoke. He looked at me. I reminded him of the Nashville Evening Mail. “Ah,” said he, “I am pleased to meet anyone from the glowing past. Back upon that time I look with fondness. Your great journal made life worth living.”
DAVID BISPHAM,
One of the great stars of Grand Opera, who devotes a few weeks of his time each season to lyceum work. The fact that an artist of Bispham’s standing can be brought to the platform, is one of the strong evidences of its phenomenal development.
DR. THOMAS E. GREEN.
Dr. Thomas E. Green, whose lecture, “The Key to the Twentieth Century,” has been so widely and favorably commented upon by the Press of the Country within the last year, will add a few Southern cities to his platform itinerary, the coming season.