Success in England increased his opportunities, as well as his courage, to speak in America. Invitations grew more and more frequent, and compensation more liberal. His thrilling voice was often heard, thenceforth, in the towns and cities of New England. In 1850, he went to lecture at St. Louis, and met audience after audience on the way. During the next twenty years he spent at least two months of discomfort, every winter, lecturing in city after city throughout the free States. Everywhere he gave his best thought, and as much as possible of it, in every lecture. Logical order seemed less important; and he spent much more time in condensing than in arranging the sentences selected from his note-books. Strikingly original ideas, which had flashed upon him at various times, were presented one after another as if each were complete in itself. The intermixture of quotations and anecdotes did not save the general character from becoming often chaotic; but the chaos was always full of power and light. Star after star rose rapidly upon his astonished and delighted hearers. They sometimes could not understand him; but they always felt lifted up. Parker described him in 1839 as pouring forth "a stream of golden atoms of thought"; and Lowell called him some twenty years later "the most steadily attractive lecturer in America." These young men and others of like aspirations walked long distances to visit him or hear him speak in public. The influence of his lectures increased that of the books into which they finally crystallised. In 1860, he had made his way of thinking so common that his _Conduct of Life_ had a sale of 2500 copies in two days. His readers were nowhere numerous, outside of Boston; but they were, and are, to be found everywhere.