Read Ebook: The Continental Monthly Vol. 1 No. 2 February 1862 Devoted To Literature And National Policy by Various

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The critical reader may experience a desire to propound to me a question:--'Professor of what?'

Now I profess honesty, as an abstract principle--being, perhaps the conscientious reader will think, more of a professor than a practicer herein. But the truth is, in the present mendicant state of the word 'Professor,' I conceived I had a perfect right and title to it, by virtue of my poverty, and so appropriated it for the behoof and advantage of Number One. Which explanation, it is hoped, will do.

Friday passed in cultivating still farther the acquaintance of the previous evening, and receiving the most cordial assurances of interest on their part in my visit and its object. I was candidly informed by my good friends, not to get my expectations too high, as a very large house could scarcely, they feared, be expected; but I deemed an audience of even no more than fifty or seventy-five a fair beginning,--a very fair beginning,--and had no fears.

I retired to my room at five o'clock, and remained locked in, with my lecture before me, oblivious of all external affairs, until a few minutes past seven, when I concluded my audience had gathered. I then smoothed my hair, adjusted my spectacles, took my MS. in my hand, and proceeded to the lecture-room. The doorkeeper was fast asleep, and the long wicks of the tallow candles were flaring wildly and dimly on a scene of emptiness. Not an auditor was present!

I descended to the bar-room. It was full of loungers, smoking, dozing, and drinking. Without entering, I hastened across the way to the post-office. There was the courteous postmaster, engaged in a sleepy talk with Squire Johnson and Dr. Tomson and Mr. Dickson and Mr. Dobson and Mr. Potkins, who sat precisely as they sat the evening previous.

I returned to the hotel and called out the landlord.

'Wal, I didn't cal'late much of anybody'd go in. They gen'ally go over to Tyre when they want shows. Tyre's quite a town. You'd do better over thar; 's on'y seven mile over to Tyre.'

I explained my position to the landlord at once, and threw myself on his mercy. I told him I had no money, but would walk over to Tyre that very evening, rather than task his hospitality longer. After making a little money in Tyre, I would return to Sidon and settle his little bill. To which the generous-hearted fellow responded,--

Remonstrance was in vain. I found that my sharp landlord had entered my room while I was looking in at the post-office door, and had taken my carpet-bag, with everything I had, even my overcoat, and stowed all in a cupboard under the bar, under lock and key. He would not so much as allow me a clean shirt; and I started for Tyre, wishing from the bottom of my heart that the inhuman landlord might engage in a washing-machine speculation, and involve with himself Mr. Potkins and Mr. Dobson and Mr. Dickson and Dr. Tomson and Squire Johnson.

I reached Tyre at ten o'clock, and found that I had not been deceived respecting its size. It was quite a large Tillage, with well laid out streets, handsome residences, two large hotels, and three or four churches. I took this inventory of the principal objects in Tyre with considerable more anxiety than I had ever supposed it possible for me to entertain concerning any country town in Christendom. I was interested in the prosperity of Tyre. I sincerely hoped that the hard times had not entered its quiet and beautiful streets. The streets certainly were both quiet and beautiful, as I looked upon them in the clear moonlight of ten o'clock at night, an hour when honest people in the country are, for the most part, asleep. I entered the handsomest of the hotels, and registered my name in a bran-new book on the clerk's counter.

Name.

Residence.

Destination.

'Beautiful evening, sir,' said the clerk, who was also the landlord, but not also the bar-tender and the hostler.

'You are right, sir,' said I; 'it is truly a lovely evening. I have rarely seen moonlight so beautiful. Indeed, such were the beauties of the evening, that I have positively been tempted so far as to walk over here from Sidon this evening, leaving my baggage to follow me in the morning.'

'Ah! lectured in Sidon perhaps?'

'Well, ah! um! yes; that is, I intend to do so, but unforeseen circumstances induced me to relinquish that purpose. Sidon is very small.'

'Yes, sir, small place. Never heard of a lecture, or any kind of a performance, there before. Fact is, they're a hard set over to Sidon, and the place is better known by the name of Sodom around here.'

I felt much encouraged at hearing this; for, to tell the truth, my cogitations as I tramped over the rough road between Tyre and Sidon had been anything but cheerful. This was a realization of my fond dreams of a ten-to-fifty-dollars-a-night lecture tour, such as I had hardly anticipated, and as I drew nigh unto Tyre I had been thinking whether I had not better try to get a situation as a farm-hand or dry-goods clerk before my troubles should have crushed me and driven me to suicide.

But the landlord cheered me. Tyre was a model town. Tyre had a newspaper, and Tyre patronized literary entertainments. There was a good hall in Tyre, and the Tyrians had filled it to overflowing last winter when Chapin spoke there. I went to bed under the benignant influence of my cheerful host, and dreamed of lecturing to an audience of many thousands in a hall a trifle larger than the Academy of Music, and with every nook and corner crowded with enthusiastic listeners, whose joy culminated with my peroration into such a tumult of delight that they rushed upon the stage and hoisted me on their shoulders amid cheers so boisterous that they awoke me. I found I had left my bed and mounted into a window, with the intention, doubtless, of stepping into the street and concluding my career at once, lest an anti-climax should be my fate.

In the morning, I called on the editor of the newspaper.

'My dear sir, you can not succeed here with a lecture. We have had several in our village within a few years, but never one which 'paid,' unless it was one on phrenology, or physiology, or psychology, and plentifully spiced with humor of the coarsest sort. If you want to make money in Tyre, you'll take my advice and get a two-headed calf, a learned pig, or a band of nigger minstrels. Any of these things will answer your purpose, if you want money; but if you have ambition to gratify, if you want to lecture for the sake of lecturing, that's a different thing. At all events, you shall have my good wishes, and I'll do all I can to get you a house. But it won't pay.'

LECTURE AT GRECIAN HALL.--We take pleasure in announcing that Prof. GREEN D. BROWN, of New York city, will favor the citizens of Tyre with a lecture on Tuesday evening next. From what we know of the gentleman, we are satisfied our citizens will not regret attending the lecture. We trust he may not be met with an audience so small as lectures have heretofore drawn out in Tyre. The apathy of our citizens in these matters, we have before stated, is disgraceful. Let there be a good turn-out.

But there was not a good turn-out. The receipts were two dollars and a half. The proprietor of the hall consented to take the receipts for his pay, and I returned to the hotel to muse over my unhappy fortunes.

The landlord took occasion the next morning, as I was passing out of the house, to remind me that my baggage had not arrived.

'No,' said I, 'but, as I soon leave Tyre, I shan't need it.'

The landlord looked at my dirty collar and bosom as if he doubted either my sanity or my decency, and remarked that perhaps I knew his rules compelled him to present the bills of strangers semi-weekly.

'O, yes! that's all right,' said I; 'I'll see you when I come back from the printing-office.'

I noticed that mine host stood watching to see that I entered the printing-office safely.

The editor remarked, after I had told him all the experience narrated here, commencing with the washing-machines,--

'It's a bad case, and I don't admire your experience at all, to speak candidly; but I have a little idea of my own to work out, and you can help me do it, perhaps. In the first place, though, I want to know whether you intend to continue in this line of business,--eh?'

'Not I,' was my fervent reply; 'I'm satisfied to leave lecturing to those who have a reputation, and to earn my bread and butter in a, for me, more legitimate way. But what is it you have in view?'

'Come and see me this evening, when I am at leisure, and I'll tell you what my enterprise is. Meantime, will you sell me your lecture? I can't afford to pay much for it, but I'll agree to settle your hotel bill if you'll part with it. Not that I think it's worth it, but you need to be helped somehow right away.'

I jumped at the chance, and thanked my friend heartily. He asked if I would please go and send the landlord to him, and I retired to perform that errand.

I was punctual to my appointment in the evening, and listened to the project my editorial angel had in view; a plan by which he proposed to inflict a lesson on the negligent Tyrians, and at the same time replenish my purse. He explained to me the part I was to perform in this enterprise, and I found I could enter heartily into the spirit of it. We shook hands in the best of humors, and parted that evening understanding each other perfectly.

MONS. BELITZ'S CELEBRATED AND MAGNIFICENT EXHIBITION, THE GREAT TRAVELING HUMBURG! The most wonderful entertainment, whether CAININE, PRISTINE, OR QUININE, ever brought before the astonished Public's visual organs!!!

AT GRECIAN HALL, TYRE,

On Saturday Evening, December 22, 1859.

MONS. BELITZ, the celebrated Magician from Egypt, performer general to

THE GRAND FOO FOO, and professor of the Black Art to all the crowned heads of the Cannibal Islands and Ham Sandwichlands!!

YANKEE SHOCKWIG, the mirth-splitting and side-provoking delineator of down-east horse peculiarities. Must be appreciated to be seen.

BRUDDER GEORGE AND AUNTY CLAWSON, the never-to-be-sufficiently-equaled delineators of Ethiopian eccentricities, whose performances during the winter of 1869 delighted overflowing houses in the Cape Cod Lunatic Asylum for 4000 consecutive nights.

BENJAMIN BOLT, Esq., the justly-celebrated trumpeter from the splendid orchestral band attached to Marnum's Buseum, New York city, for the past fifty years!

FANTADIMO FANTODIMUS, the graceful and efficient master of ceremonies, whose efforts have been awarded by the entire available population of Blackwell's Island, in a series of resolutions of the most pathetic description!

Owing to future engagements, the stay of this troupe in Tyre will be POSITIVELY FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY, when the Programme will be specified in small bills of the evening.

Admittance, 25 cents. Doors open at 6; Master of Ceremonies makes his bow at 7.

PROF. BROWN D. GREEN, AGENT.

Against the advice of the editor of the Times, I dispatched an agent over to Sidon, with a supply of blanked bills from the same form, with instructions to arrange for a similar 'sell' on the following Monday evening in that charming village.

'Ladies and gentlemen: You now see before you the redoubtable Fantadimo Fantodimus, master of ceremonies for the Great Humbug Troupe. You also see before you, ladies and gentlemen, Mons. Belitz, the renowned magician, Mademoiselle Heliotrope, the graceful danseuse, Signor Strawstekowski, Herr Balamsass; and, in short, ladies and gentlemen, you see before you the sum and substance of the Great Humbug Troupe, as it exists in all its original splendor. We salute you!

'My friends, you were drawn here to-night by the extravagantly worded and outlandish representations of a poster which promised you only one single thing, namely, that you should behold a Great Traveling Humbug. Nothing could be more honest, though some things might be more straightforward. Force of circumstances compels me this evening to represent the Great Traveling Humbug you came to see. I am this evening the greatest of humbugs. I travel. A week ago, I traveled into this village with the laudable intention of giving you a sensible lecture on EURIPIDES, a historical personage of whom some of you may have heard. I traveled over to this hall on the evening of my lecture, and spoke to a beggarly array of empty seats. To-morrow morning, I intend to travel to church in your beautiful village, repent of my sins, and on Monday travel home to New York, where I shall at once take measures to rid myself of the title I wear this evening, by earning my bread in the old-fashioned way, by the sweat of my brow.

'Humbug, ladies and gentlemen, is a pill not at all disagreeable to take, when gilded carefully. My pill has been prepared by the hand of a novice, and you have swallowed it with your eyes open. May it benefit you!'

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