would not invite the usual lecturers. The result was an independent course, under the auspices of dissatisfied members of the association, in which the rejected lecturers spoke in the largest hall in the city, and the signal triumph of the seceders lay in the immense audience which assembled in contrast to the attenuated attendance upon the regular course.

The singular success of the lyceum lecture of that time was due, undoubtedly, to two causes—the simultaneous appearance of a remarkable group of orators, and their profound sympathy with the question which absorbed the public mind. The weekly lecture was not merely a display of oratory, not only an amusing recreation, but it brought wit and accomplishment and eloquence to strengthen the public feeling and arouse the public conscience, and to confirm the earnest spirit which was universal, and which forecast the great events and the noble elevation of the public mind that followed. Emerson, Wendell Phillips, Gough, Beecher, Chapin, Starr King, Theodore Parker, could of themselves carry any course of lectures, and each in his own way was thoroughly in accord with the truest American life of that time. The situation and the condition of the public mind would not have availed, indeed, without the happy chance of such orators to create the lyceum, but with that chance the lyceum of that day was as remarkable a continuous display of various and effective eloquence as has been ever known.

If the faithful diary of any lecturer who went the grand rounds twenty-five years ago, from Maine to the Mississippi, could be published, it would be full of the most amusing stories. The lecturers all had them to tell, and they were all men of a singularly fine perception of humor. James T. Fields, the publisher in Boston, was the friend of all the lyceum orators, and towards the close of his life he was himself a popular and attractive lecturer upon literary subjects. His little cell or private office in the old corner book-store in Boston was an exchange of lecturers for that neighborhood, which teemed with lyceums, and no similar space has ever heard fresher stories better told, or has ever echoed with gayer laughter.

It was the pleasant company in that little retreat which first heard, the day after it occurred, the tale of the belated lecturer who, hurrying from the cars in a carriage to the hall in Boston, long beyond the hour, dinnerless, and with no chance to dress, opened his travelling-bag, and proceeded, to the consternation of the lady who had taken a seat in the same carriage, and whose pardon he politely and briefly invoked, to change his collar and his coat. As he began to pull off his coat, having pulled off his collar, his amazed and terrified fellow-passenger began to pull at the door, and to call loudly upon the driver, who was furiously whipping his horses into a pace that increased both the noise of the carriage and the conviction of the terrified lady that she was the victim of some dreadful conspiracy, or the hapless victim of a maniac. The maniac's earnest but interjectional explanation as he proceeded in his toilet, begging his companion to be pacified, as he was merely going to lecture, was an unintelligible asseveration, which only made his madness more indisputable and awful, and what might have befallen the poor lady, if the carriage had not suddenly stopped at the hall, and the lecturer, in his clean collar and black coat, had not begged her pardon for frightening her, with a fervor that frightened her all the more, and disappeared from the vehicle with his travelling-bag, shawl, and umbrella, he was not prepared to say. But the tale, as he told it the next morning with infinite humor in Fields's corner, was received, as he ruefully admitted, with louder shouts of laughter than had greeted the brightest witticisms of his lecture.

Fields is gone, and his old friend and neighbor Whipple, who was one of the earliest of the noted lyceum lecturers. The old corner in the old corner book-store is gone, and with it have vanished many of the happy company that gathered there, not only of orators, but of famous authors. The lyceum of the last generation is gone, but it is not surprising that those who recall with the Utica Herald its golden prime should cherish a kindly and regretful feeling for an institution which was so peculiarly American, and which served so well the true American spirit and American life.

TWEED.

HERE are many persons who wonder why Tweed did not evade justice by forfeiting his bail. He had every chance to escape, they say; why did he stay? His chief confederates are safe in Europe, where he might easily have been, yet he was foolish enough to take the risk of a trial, and he is imprisoned, probably for the rest of his life. The explanation, however, is very obvious. He did not believe there was any risk. Tweed was the most striking illustration of a very common faith—belief in the Almighty Dollar. He is the victim of a most touching fidelity to the great principle which every good American will surely be the last to flout. His creed was very simple: it was that money would buy everything, and he reposed upon his belief with the sweet security of the Mussulman who sees by faith a heaven of houris. Certainly his confidence was not surprising. He had proved his creed. He had seen money work miracles. He had seen himself, a man of no cleverness and of no advantages, rising swiftly by means of it from insignificant poverty to the control of a great party. It had made him master of one of the great cities of the world. It had secured for him Governors, Legislatures, councils, and legal and executive authorities of every kind. He invested in land and judges. He bought dogs and lawyers. He silenced the press with a golden muzzle, and money made his will law.

Here was a man who wanted nothing that money could not buy: was it strange that he had unbounded faith in it? Every form of virtue was to him mere affectation, a more or less ingenious and tenacious "strike" for money. If a man spoke of honesty, patriotism, self-respect, the public welfare, public opinion, truth, justice, right, Tweed smiled at the fine phrases in which the auctioneer, anxious to sell himself, cried, "Going! going!" Argument, reason, decency—they were meaningless to him. If an opponent held out, he simply asked, "How much?" The world was a market. Life was a bargain. He felt himself with pride to be the largest operator in his way, as Vanderbilt in his, or Stewart in his.

In Albany he had the finest quarters at the Delavan, and when he came into the great dining-room at dinner-time, and looked at all the tables thronged with members of the Legislature and the lobby, he had a benignant, paternal expression, as of a patriarch pleased to see his retainers happy. It was a magnificent rendering of Fagin and his pupils. You could imagine him trotting up and down in the character of an unsuspicious old gentleman with his handkerchief hanging out of his pocket, that his scholars might show their skill in prigging a wipe. He knew which of that cheerful company was the Artful Dodger and which Charley Bates. And he never doubted that he could buy every man in the room if he were willing to pay the price. So at the Capitol, where sits the Legislature of a noble commonwealth of four millions of souls, he moved about with an air of fat good-nature, like the chief shepherd of the flock. If he stood at the door of the Assembly looking in, it is easy to fancy him saying to himself, The State pays these men two or three hundred dollars for four months' service; I will give them better wages. He did not doubt that it was a fair transaction. What is the State? It is only four millions of people, he