But if we give it up, the
calluses disappear; and if we meddle with it again, we miss the
novelty and get the blisters.--The story is often quoted of
Whitefield, that he said a sermon was good for nothing until it had
been preached forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until
it has passed its hundredth delivery; and some, I think, have
doubled, if not quadrupled, that number. These old lectures are a
man's best, commonly; they improve by age, also,--like the pipes,
fiddles, and poems I told you of the other day. One learns to make
the most of their strong points and to carry off their weak ones,
--to take out the really good things which don't tell on the
audience, and put in cheaper things that do. All this degrades
him, of course, but it improves the lecture for general delivery.
A thoroughly popular lecture ought to have nothing in it which five
hundred people cannot all take in a flash, just as it is uttered.
--No, indeed,--I should be very sorry to say anything disrespectful
of audiences. I have been kindly treated by a great many, and may
occasionally face one hereafter. But I tell you the AVERAGE
intellect of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not very
high.
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