Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/255

 jsT.35.] LYCEUM LECTURES. 231

audience in his manner or his matter ; but it was the era of lectures, and if one could once gain admission to the circle of &quot; lyceum lecturers,&quot; it did not so much matter what he said ; a lecture was a lecture, as a sermon was a sermon, good, bad, or indifferent. But it was common to ex clude the anti-slavery speakers from the lyceums, even those of more eloquence than Thoreau ; this led to invitations from the small band of reformers scattered about New England and New York, so that the most unlikely of platform speakers (Ellery Channing, for example) some times gave lectures at Plymouth, Greenfield, Newburyport, or elsewhere. The present fash ion of parlor lectures had not come in ; yet at Worcester Thoreau s friends early organized for him something of that kind, as his letters to Mr. Blake show. In default of an audience of num bers, Thoreau fell into the habit of lecturing in his letters to this friend ; the most marked in stance being the thoughtful essay on Love and Chastity which makes the bulk of his epistle dated September, 1852. Like most of his seri ous writing, this was made up from his daily journal, and hardly comes under the head of &quot; familiar letters ; &quot; the didactic purpose is rather too apparent. Yet it cannot be spared from any collection of his epistles, none of which flowed more directly from the quickened moral nature of the man.