THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
sion tickets. This struck me as remarkable, and upon inquiry I learned that no arrangement for watching the entrance door was necessary, because every family in the town and immediate neighborhood was a regular subscriber to the course, and if some stranger should drop in as a dead-head, it would not matter. On the contrary, he would be welcome.
As a rule it was expected that the lecturer would discuss serious subjects in a serious way—which, of course, does not mean that a joke was not appreciated in a scientific address or even in a sermon. But the prevailing desire was that the lyceum audience should be told something worth knowing, that their stock of information and ideas should be enlarged, and that their moral sense should be enlightened and stirred. The professional jester and the spectacular performer were not altogether excluded, but they formed the exception, and in most places a very rare one. I am informed that in many of the country towns the lyceum courses have of late fallen into disuse, and that in others their serious character has more or less given way to a growing demand for mere light amusement, which, if true, is much to be regretted.
The observations I made on my lecturing journeys of those years were among the most interesting and cheering of my early American experiences. I saw what I might call the middle-class culture in process of formation. Among those who superintended or mainly patronized the lecture courses I came into contact with many men and women who had enjoyed but little, if anything, more than an ordinary school education, but who carried into the humdrum of their daily life, which, especially in the somewhat lonesome far Western towns, may often have been dreary enough, a very earnest desire to keep pace with the progress of civilization in all its aspects, by informing themselves about the products of literature, the
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