The Humors of Falconbridge: A Collection of Humorous and Every Day ScenesFalconbridge
General
The Humors of Falconbridge: A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes
Falconbridge
American wit and humor
Of all the public lecturers of our time and place, none have attracted
more attention from the press, and consequently the people, than RALPH
WALDO EMERSON.
Lecturing has become quite a fashionable science--and now, instead of
using the old style phrases for illustrating facts, we call travelling
preachers perambulating showmen, and floating politicians, _lecturers_.
As a lecturer, Ralph Waldo Emerson is extensively known around these
parts; but whether his lectures come under the head of law, logic,
politics, Scripture, or the show business, is a matter of much
speculation; for our own part, the more we read or hear of Ralph, the
more we don't know what it's all about.
Somebody has said, that to his singularity of style or expression,
Carlyle and his works owe their great notoriety or fame--and many
compare Ralph Waldo to old Carlyle. They cannot trace exactly any great
affinity between these two great geniuses of the flash literary school.
Carlyle writes vigorously, quaintly enough, but almost always speaks
when he says something; on the contrary, our flighty friend Ralph speaks
vigorously, yet says nothing! Of all men that have ever stood and
delivered in presence of "a reporter," none surely ever led these
indefatigable knights of the pen such a wild-goose chase over the
verdant and flowery pastures of King's English, as Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In ordinary cases, a reporter well versed in his art, catches a sentence
of a speaker, and goes on to fill it out upon the most correct
impression of what was intended, or what is implied. But no such
license follows the outpourings of Mr. Emerson; no thought can fathom
his intentions, and quite as bottomless are even his finished sentences.
We have known "old stagers," in the newspaporial line, veteran
reporters, so dumbfounded and confounded by the first fire of Ralph, and
his grand and lofty acrobating in elocution, that they up, seized their
hat and paper, and sloped, horrified at the prospect of an attempt to
"take down" Mr. Emerson.
If Roaring Ralph touches a homely mullen weed, on a donkey heath,
straightway he makes it a full-blown rose, in the land of Ophir,
shedding an odor balmy as the gales of Arabia; while with a facility the
wonderful London auctioneer Robbins might envy, Ralph imparts to a
lime-box, or pig-sty, a negro hovel, or an Irish shanty, all the
romance, artistic elegance and finish of a first-class manor-house, or
Swiss cottage, inlaid with alabaster and fresco, surrounded by elfin
bowers, grand walks, bee hives, and honeysuckles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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