DRAWING ROOM LECTURES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 70, 16 December 1907, Page 3

DRAWING ROOM LECTURES.

Wo published the other day, a suggestion from an English paper that women should cultivate the art of public speaking and go in especially for drawing-room oratory. It;was suggested that this would open up a now.and profitable field for educated women.. A writer in an American magazine recently gave an account of the field as worked by adventurers in New York. : "Now York is an excellent place for the ignorant, for when all else fails there is stil' a living to be gained from the practice of pedagogy' in its various branches. Only those who have frequented the fashionably intellectual society of the town have any conception of the appalling ignorance •■ of those persons who give private lessons at high'rates,.deliver Lenten drawing-room lectures or have classes in this, that, or the other. With all my experience I am literally stunned now and again by the blended ignorance, conceit, and assurance of some of these instructors; and the more occult, and elusive, ' and ; difficult'th'o subject, tho_ greater the ignorance., of,.those.,who "discuss it.. Nor for worlds would I'put a stone in the way of any of these enterprising counterparts of Mrs. "Wharton's 'Pelican,' but I honestly believe that there is no .woman, in this country too ignorant to deliver a course of lectures on Bhuddism, art, the drama, or modern Iris! , poetry. I myself know of a farmer's daughter, whose son-in-law is a stage carpenter, and "who on the strength of this rather shadowy connection with tho most elusive, difficult and least understood of : all the arts, now makes an excellent living by lecturing on tlv 'Modern Drama'—a subject that is not thoroughly understood by more than a score' ol men in this country. Of course no one attends tlieso lectures, which are given in thr ballroom of a fashionable hotel, except tl)> most brilliant women in society and thei: many imitators; but thanks to Providence., the supply of these is sufficiently abundant to make her business a permanent one. Another woman goes about reading poetry of an obscure brand and accompanying herself by clawing the strings of a rudely-mado instrument, which she declares to have been ir uso among tho ancients, but which I firmly believe was made fofher by tho carpenter ir her own village. As yet no one, so far as my knowledge goes, has lectured on Ibsen and accompanied herself by playing on musical instruments with her feet, a combination that ought to yield an abundant harvest.