It was due partly to the national gloom that overspread the people
during the Civil War that I took to the lecture platform actively. I
entered fully into the lecturing field when I went to Philadelphia,
where DeWitt Moore, officer in my church and a most intimate friend,
asked me to lecture for the benefit of a Ball Club to which he belonged.
That lecture in a hall in Locust Street, Philadelphia, opened the way
for more than I could do as lecturer.

I have always made such engagements subordinate to my chief work of
preaching the Gospel. Excepting two long journeys a year, causing each
an absence of two Sundays, I have taken no lecturing engagements, except
one a week, generally Thursdays. Lecturing has saved my life and
prolonged my work. It has taken me from an ever-ringing door-bell, and
freshened me for work, railroad travelling being to me a recuperation.

I have lectured in nearly all the cities of the United States, Canada,
England, Ireland and Scotland, and in most of them many times. The
prices paid me have seemed too large, but my arrangements have generally
been made through bureaus, and almost invariably local committees have
cleared money. The lecture platform seemed to me to offer greater
opportunity for usefulness. Things that could not be said in the pulpit,
but which ought to be said, may be said on the lyceum platform. And
there was so much that had to be said then, to encourage, to cheer, to
brighten, to illumine the sorrow and bereavement. From the first I
regarded my lecture tours as an annex to my church. The lecture platform
has been to me a pastoral visitation. It has given me an opportunity of
meeting hundreds of thousands of people to whom, through the press, I
have for many years administered the Gospel.

People have often asked me how much money I received for my lectures.