Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/327

1866.] further, that there was a great deal in the title of the lecture. It must be alliterative, antithetical, or, still better, paradoxical. There was profound skill in Artemus Ward's "Babes in the Wood." Such titles as "Doubts and Duties," "Mystery and Muffins," "Here, There, and Nowhere," "The Elegance of Evil," "Sunshine and Shrapnel," "The Coming Cloud," "The Averted Agony," and "Peeps at Peccadillos," will explain my meaning. The latter, in fact, was the actual title of my first lecture, which I gave with such signal success,—eighty-five times in one winter.

The crowds that everywhere thronged to hear me gave me a new and delicious experience of popularity. How grand it was to be escorted by the president of the society down the central aisle, amid the rustling sound of turning heads, and audible whispers of "There he is! there he is!" And always, when the name of Dionysius Green was announced, the applause which followed! Then the hush of expectation, the faint smile and murmur coming with my first unexpected flash of humor (unexpectedness is one of my strong points), the broad laugh breaking out just where I intended it, and finally the solemn peroration, which showed that I possessed depth and earnestness as well as brilliancy! Well, I must say that the applauses and the fees were honestly earned. I did my best, and the audiences must have been satisfied, or the societies wouldn't have invited me over and over again to the same place.

If my literary style was so admirably adapted to this new vocation, it was, on the other hand, a source of great annoyance. Only a small class was sufficiently enlightened to comprehend my true aim in inculcating moral lessons under a partly humorous guise. All the rest, unfortunately, took me to be either one thing or the other. While some invited me to family prayer-meetings, as the most cheering and welcome relief after the fatigue of speaking, the rougher characters of the place would claim me (on the strength of my earlier writings) as one of themselves, would slap me on the back, call me familiarly "Dionysius," and insist on my drinking with them. Others, again, occupied a middle or doubtful ground; they did not consider that my personal views were strictly defined, and wanted to be enlightened on this or that point of faith. They gave me a deal of trouble. Singularly enough, all these classes began their attacks with the same phrase, "O, we have a right to ask it of you: you're a Distinguished Character, you know!"

It is hardly necessary to say that I am of rather a frail constitution: so many persons have seen me, that the public is generally aware of the fact. A lecture of an hour and a quarter quite exhausts my nervous energy. Moreover, it gives me a vigorous appetite, and my two overpowering desires, after speaking, are, first to eat, and then to sleep. But it frequently happens that I am carried, perforce, to the house of some good but ascetic gentleman, who gives me a glass of cold water, talks until midnight, and then delivers me, more dead than alive, to my bed. I am so sensitive in regard to the relation of guest and host that I can do naught but submit. Astræa, I am told, always asks for what she wants, and does what she feels inclined to do,—indeed, why shouldn't she?—but I am cast in a more timid mould.

There are some small country places which I visit where I have other sufferings to undergo. Being a Distinguished Character, it would be a neglect and a slight if I were left alone for two minutes. And the people seem to think that the most delightful topic of conversation which they can select is—myself. How weary of myself I become! I have wished, a thousand times, that my popular work, "The Tin Trumpet," had never been written. I cannot blame the people, because there are and, who like nothing better than to be talked about to their faces, and to take the principal part in the conversation. Of course the people think, in regard to lecturers, 'ex uno disce omnes.