This at least, is my own theory of lecturing; and, in the instance of my talk on Hawthorne, I seem to have carried it out successfully in practice. I must have attained a tone of sombre gray, and seemed for the moment a meditative Puritan under a shadowy and steepled hat; for, at the close of the lecture, a silvery-haired and sweet-faced woman asked me if I wouldn't be so kind as to lead the devotional service in the Baptist House that evening. I found myself abashed. But a previous engagement saved me; and I was able to retire, not without honor, though with some discomfiture. This previous engagement was a steamboat ride upon the lake. When you want to give a sure-enough party at Chautauqua, you charter a steamboat and escape from the enclosure, having seduced a sufficient number of other people to come along and sing. On this particular evening, the party consisted of the Chautauqua School of Expression,--a bevy of about thirty young women who were having their speaking voices cultivated by an admired friend of mine who is one of the best readers in America; and they sang with real spirit, so soon as we had churned our way beyond remembrance of (I mean no disrespect) the Baptist House. But this boat-ride had a curious effect on the four or five male members of the party. We touched at a barbarous and outrageous settlement, named (if I remember rightly) Bemus Point; and hardly had the boat been docked before there ensued a hundred-yard dash for a pair of swinging doors behind which dazzled lights splashed gaudily on soapy mirrors. I did not really desire a drink at the time; but I took two, and the other men did likewise. I understood at once (for I must always philosophize a little) why excessive drinking is induced in prohibition states. Tell me that I may not laugh, and I wish at once to laugh my head off,--though I am at heart a holy person who loves Keats. This incongruous emotion must have been felt, under this or that influence of external inhibition, by everyone who is alive enough to like swimming, and Dante, and Weber and Fields, and Filipino Lippi, and the view of the valley underneath the sacred stones of Delphi. Within the enclosure of Chautauqua one does not drink at all; and I infer that this regulation is well-advised. I base this inference upon my gradual discovery that all the regulations of this well-conducted Institution have been fashioned sanely to contribute to the greatest good of the greatest number. That is my final, critical opinion. But how we did dash for the swinging doors at Bemus Point!--we four or five simple-natured human beings who were not, in any considerable sense, drinking men at all.