whole hour and a
half. It was faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead
perfection--no more. It was so perfect that some people thought it
great. The man was an actor and had what is called platform presence. He
would walk on the stage, carrying his big, blue cloak over his arm, his
slouch-hat in his hand--for he clung to these Beecher properties to the
last, even claiming that Beecher was encroaching on his preserve in
wearing them.

He would bow as stiffly and solemnly as a new-made judge. Then he would
toss the cloak on a convenient sofa, place the big hat on top of it, and
come down to the footlights, deliberately removing his yellow kid
gloves. There was no introduction--he was the whole show and brooked no
competition. He would begin talking as he removed the gloves; he would
get one glove off and hold it in the other hand, seemingly lost in his
speech. From time to time he would emphasize his remarks by beating the
palm of his gloved hand with the loose glove. By the time the lecture
was half over, both gloves would be lying on the table; unlike the
performance of Sir Edwin Arnold, who, during his readings, always wore
one white kid glove and carried its mate in the gloved hand from
beginning to end.

Theodore Tilton's lectures were consummate art, done by a handsome,
graceful and cultured man in a red necktie, but they did not carry
enough caloric to make them go. They seemed to lack vibrations. Art
without a message is for the people who love art for art's sake, and God
does not care much for these, otherwise he would not have made so few of
them.

* * * * *

Lyman Abbott sums up his estimate of the worth of his lifelong friend
and literary associate, Henry Ward Beecher, in the following words:

"It was in the pulpit that Beecher was seen at his best. His
mastery of the English tongue, his dramatic power, his instinctive
art of impersonation, which had become a second nature, his vivid
imagination, his breadth of intellectual view, the catholicity of
his sympathies, his passionate enthusiasm, which made for the
moment his immediate theme seem to him the one theme of
transcendent importance, his quaint humor alternating with genuine
pathos, and above all his simple and singularly unaffected
devotional nature, made him as a preacher without a peer in his own
time and country. His favorite theme was love: love to