At Yale I had to earn my own living, and that is why, for these forty-four years, I have been lecturing exclusively to help young men secure their college education. I arose at four o'clock and worked in the New Haven House from four to eight to get the "come backs" from the breakfast table so that my brother and I could live. Some days, however, I digged potatoes in the afternoon, and taught music in the evening, although the former was my proper occupation. Sometimes my music scholars would invite me in to play something to entertain their company, and I noticed the louder I played the louder they talked. I often said, "What a low standard of musical culture there is in New Haven!" But I learned something after I left college. I learned I was not a musician.
Had I been a musician they would have listened. That is the only test of real music. There is no other.
If you sing and every one whispers, or you play and every one talks, it is because you are not a musician. I dare tell it to you here, when I would not dare say it to you individually if we were alone. There is no person on earth who gets so many lies to the square inch as a person who drums on a piano.
What is music? Music may be wholly a personal matter and be called music. I remember Major Snow, of my native town, who used to listen to the filing of the saw at the sawmill. How that did screech and scratch until it hurt to our toes! We asked the old major why he went down to the mill Saturday, when he could go any other day. He said: "Oh, boys, you do not understand it. When I was young I worked in a sawmill and I come down here to hear them file that saw. It reminds me of the good old days. It is music to me." He was "educated up" to that standard where filing of a saw was music to him, and so men may be educated in all manner of ways in so-called music. But it is not the real music.
What is true music? I went to a beautiful church in New York to exchange with the pastor, and an officer of the church came down the aisle as I walked in and said to me, "Sir, the choir always opens the service." They did; they opened it! I sat down on the pulpit sofa and waited an embarrassingly long time for something to be done up there. The choir roosted on a shelf over my head. The soprano earned $4,000 a year, and I was anxious to hear her. Soon I heard the rustle of silk up there, and one or two little giggles. Then the soprano began. She struck the lowest note her cultivated voice could possibly touch, and then she began to wind, or rather, corkscrew, her way up and up and up, out of sight—and she stayed up there. Then the second bass began and wound his way down, down, down—down to the Hades of sound—and he stayed down there.
Now, was that music? Was it worship? Why, if I had stood in that sacred place and positively sworn at the people it would not have been greater sacrilege than that exhibition up on that shelf! Do you think the living God is to be worshiped by a high-flying, pyrotechnic, trapeze performance in acoustics? Neither worship nor music was there. Music does not consist of a high-flying circus trapeze performance in acoustics.
What is music? Music is such a combination of sound as moves the heart to holier emotions, quickens the brain to brighter thoughts, and moves the whole man on to nobler deeds. That is music. Nothing else is music. You can only find out whether you are a musician or not by taking notice, while you sing, whether you hold the attention of the people, and whether you influence their memory and their after character.
Chapter V. Need of Orators
We need great orators. The need is something alarming. I am often called to lecture at the Chautauquas and the lyceums, and the committees often urge me to recommend some man or woman who will fill a place on the public platform. They offer marvelous rewards for those who will do that well. There are no men or women alive, not one known in our land to-day, who could be called a great orator. When I began to lecture, fifty-eight years ago, there were Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, Edward Everett, the greatest orator of his day—and John B. Gough. I esteem it a great honor to have been induced by Mr. Gough to go on the lecture platform. They are all gone, and no successors have appeared.
Liberty and oratory have ever gone together, and always will, hence the need of oratory is especially pressing now.
Why don't we have orators? The editors say "because the newspaper has come in and goes into every home, and a man on Sunday will read a better sermon in his newspaper than ever was delivered, and will save paying the minister and having trouble with the choir." Now, that time will never come. You will never get along without real orators, no matter how many newspapers you may have. I respect the press. I have had something to do with its work in my lifetime. I have worked upon and owned a daily newspaper. But I must say that there is something, after all, in the shake of a living man's finger, something in the flash of his eye, something in the stamp of his foot, but vastly more in his mesmeric power, which no cold type will ever express! You never can fully express the living man in cold lead.
Why don't we have great orators? I don't think the newspapers are in the way. But other people say to me. "It is the injurious effect of the modern school of elocution, which is now called 'the school of oratory.'" It has only been a few years since all these elocutionary schools changed their names to "schools of oratory" and consequently damaged the prospect of our country. The school of elocution may not be a school of oratory at all. It may be a hindrance to oratory; it depends on what the teaching is. There is a wide difference between elocution and real oratory. Elocution is an art of expression, which every teacher has, and he teaches his own art. But oratory is the great science of successful speech. The man who gets what he pleads for is an orator, no matter how he calls. If you call a dog and he comes, that is oratory. If he runs away, that is elocution!
Why don't we have greater orators? These schools of elocution remind me of an incident which occurred about seventeen years ago. I don't believe I will hurt any one's feelings now by mentioning it. The professor of elocution was sick one day, and the boys came after me. They wanted me to come because the teacher was away, and I resolved to go and entertain that class and let it pass for a recitation. Professors often do that. When I came into the class-room, I said to the boy on the front seat: "What was the last lesson you had in elocution?" One of the boys said:
"Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers;
If Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers,
Where are the six pecks of pickled peppers which Peter Piper picked?"
That is "lip exercise" in elocution. I said to that young man, "I will not teach elocution. But I wish you would come up and deliver that to this class just as you would to an audience." The boy came up and put his toes together, and his hands by his side, for he had not reached the study of gesture. He yelled very rapidly and loudly:
"Peter Piper, pickle-picker, picked six pecks of pickled peppers;
If Peter Piper, piping, picked six pecks of pickled peppers,
Where are the pecks of pickled peppers which Peter Piper picked?"
It was elocution, but it was not oratory. I had trouble in getting up another boy, but I finally did. He thought that oratory consisted entirely in elocutionary "inflections," so he delivered it:
"Peter Piper picked six pecks of pickled peppers;
If Peter piping picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?"
(With marked raising and lowering of the voice.)
It sounded like an old rooster in the barn in the morning. But being elocution, it was not oratory.
But the most illustrative and most absurd speech I ever heard was by a visitor in that class that day. He was sitting over near the aisle, and one of the students came and whispered to me: "That young man has graduated from an Eastern school of elocution, and he is going to act the heavy parts in tragedy upon the