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My Discovery of England by Stephen Leacock
page 107 of 149 (71%)
NOT only during my tour in England but for many years past it has
been my lot to speak and to lecture in all sorts of places, under
all sorts of circumstances and before all sorts of audiences. I
say this, not in boastfulness, but in sorrow. Indeed, I only mention
it to establish the fact that when I talk of lecturers and speakers,
I talk of what I know.

Few people realise how arduous and how disagreeable public lecturing
is. The public sees the lecturer step out on to the platform in his
little white waistcoat and his long tailed coat and with a false air
of a conjurer about him, and they think him happy. After about ten
minutes of his talk they are tired of him. Most people tire of a
lecture in ten minutes; clever people can do it in five. Sensible
people never go to lectures at all. But the people who do go to a
lecture and who get tired of it, presently hold it as a sort of a
grudge against the lecturer personally. In reality his sufferings are
worse than theirs.

For my own part I always try to appear as happy as possible while I
am lecturing. I take this to be part of the trade of anybody labelled
a humourist and paid as such. I have no sympathy whatever with the
idea that a humourist ought to be a lugubrious person with a face
stamped with melancholy. This is a cheap and elementary effect
belonging to the level of a circus clown. The image of "laughter
shaking both his sides" is the truer picture of comedy. Therefore, I
say, I always try to appear cheerful at my lectures and even to laugh
at my own jokes. Oddly enough this arouses a kind of resentment in
some of the audience. "Well, I will say," said a stern-looking woman
who spoke to me after one of my lectures, "you certainly do seem to
enjoy your own fun." "Madam," I answered, "if I didn't, who would?"
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