I smiled, and told the lady the simple truth; but I do not think she understood me.  “Ah, madam,” I said, “wait until you hear me lecture about Hawthorne....”

For (and now I am freely giving the whole game away) the secret of the art of lecturing is merely this:—­on your way to the rostrum you contrive to fling yourself into complete sympathy with the man you are to talk about, so that, when you come to speak, you will give utterance to his message, in terms that are suggestive of his style.  You must guard yourself from ever attempting to talk about anybody whom you have not (at some time or other) loved; and, at the moment, you should, for sheer affection, abandon your own personality in favor of his, so that you may become, as nearly as possible, the person whom it is your business to represent.  Naturally, if you have any ear at all, your sentences will tend to fall into the rhythm of his style; and if you have any temperament (whatever that may be) your imagined mood will diffuse an ineluctable aroma of the author’s personality.

This at least, is my own theory of lecturing; and, in the instance of my talk on Hawthorne, I seem to have carried it out successfully in practice.  I must have attained a tone of sombre gray, and seemed for the moment a meditative Puritan under a shadowy and steepled hat; for, at the close of the lecture, a silvery-haired and sweet-faced woman asked me if I wouldn’t be so kind as to lead the devotional service in the Baptist House that evening.  I found myself abashed.  But a previous engagement saved me; and I was able to retire, not without honor, though with some discomfiture.

This previous engagement was a steamboat ride upon the lake.  When you want to give a sure-enough party at Chautauqua, you charter a steamboat and escape from the enclosure, having seduced a sufficient number of other people to come along and sing.  On this particular evening, the party consisted of the Chautauqua School of Expression,—­a bevy of about thirty young women who were having their speaking voices cultivated by an admired friend of mine who is one of the best readers in America; and they sang with real spirit, so soon as we had churned our way beyond remembrance of (I mean no disrespect) the Baptist House.  But this boat-ride had a curious effect on the four or five male members of the party.  We touched at a barbarous and outrageous settlement, named (if I remember rightly) Bemus Point; and hardly had the boat been docked before there ensued a hundred-yard dash for a pair of swinging doors behind which dazzled lights splashed gaudily on soapy mirrors.  I did not really desire a drink at the time; but I took two, and the other men did likewise.  I understood at once (for I must always philosophize a little) why excessive drinking is induced in prohibition states.  Tell me that I may not laugh, and I wish at once to laugh my head off,—­though I am at heart a holy person who loves Keats.  This incongruous emotion must have been felt, under this or that influence of external inhibition, by everyone who is alive enough to like swimming, and Dante, and Weber and Fields, and Filipino Lippi, and the view of the valley underneath the sacred stones of Delphi.