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Show - - , Chairman Failed to "Sell" the Lecturer The torture is especially acute when you are lecturing on a program supported sup-ported not by season tickets, but by voluntary subscriptions. Then you actually ac-tually have to see yourself bought (and paid for, if the audience is more gen- r erous than most audiences are). I remember a men's church club which was run this way. "Gentlemen," said the chairman, looking first at the audience and then at me, "1 know you are going to have a rare treat this evening, for our guest is a speaker of the highest caliber. cal-iber. Now, gentlemen, you can't expect ex-pect to get something for nothing. Our attraction this evening costs us costs us (business of fumbling In his pocket for a page of memoranda, while I prayed God to strike me dead) costs us $:0.C0. There must be ong thousand men here tonight. Now, 1 they'll give 40 cents apiece it 'will cover everything and leave $10 In the treasury for next time." Ushers passed the hat. Thv.; chairman chair-man counted the receipts with a growing grow-ing expression of disgust. He stepped forward and flung up his hand. "Gentlemen," he exclaimed In a tone which would have wrung remorse from a tiger, "the returns are all In and they amounted to just $28,751 Less than three cents apiece!" j Though I knew I was worth less than half that sum, this knowledge did not diminish the pain of the situation. I looked vainly about for means of escape. es-cape. Guests of honor were sitting between me and the only exit I became be-came aware that the chairman was speaking again or still. He was asking ask-ing the audience if they seriously thought such a speaker as myself was worth $2S.75. lie was making the most of the rhetorical question, he ; was gloating over it. r j I was about to yield to the Impulse ' to rise and fell him with my chair when he paused. He was offering the audience the alternative of having the '; hat passed again Immediately or giving giv-ing more the following Sunday. Vociferously Vocif-erously the audience chose the latter alternative. Probably most of them would not be there next Sunday. Neither, thank heaven, should I. The chairman turned to me. At last he was finished. He was expecting expect-ing a lecturer, whom he had tortured, to entertain a thousand men whom he had been chided, berated, Insulted. Gregory Mason In Scribner's Magazine. |