THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE

________________________________________________
_ I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will be able to
make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable Tone-
Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do but
sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper, Horace
Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand on obscure
lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would otherwise clack
eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences into respectful
hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas and isms. That
is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my gray hairs. Let
me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old Red Sandstone
Period and give Tone to an intellectual entertainment twice a week, and
be so reported, and my happiness will be complete. Those men have been
my envy for long, long time. And no memories of my life are so pleasant
as my reminiscence of their long and honorable career in the Tone-
imparting service. I can recollect that first time I ever saw them on
the platforms just as well as I can remember the events of yesterday.
Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left, and Thomas
Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock sat between
them. This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion of the
state' funeral of George Washington in New York. It was a great day,
that--a great day, and a very, very sad one. I remember that Broadway
was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to where the
City Hall now stands. The next time I saw these gentlemen officiate was
at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the
sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. Horace Greeley occupied one side
of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the
other. There were other Tone-imparters attendant upon the two chiefs,
but I have forgotten their names now. Horace Greeley, gray-haired and
beaming, was in sailor costume--white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the
breast, large neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty
sailor knot, broad turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black
little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two
gallant long ribbons. Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on
benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr. Greeley, and made
him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the
honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he was so ingeniously
representing. I shall never forget him. Mr. Cooper was dressed as a
general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike. I
neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers and sailors
in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from Boston--this
was during the war of 1812. At the grand national reception of
Lafayette, in 1824, Horace Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper to
the left. The other Tone-imparters of the day are sleeping the sleep of
the just now. I was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper,
and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor of
French liberty, in 1848. Then I never saw them any more until here
lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run down
every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and
several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the platform;"
and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the phonographic
report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other
distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say to myself,
"Thank God, I was present." Thus I have been enabled to see these
substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone to
lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures on
stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on miscegenation,
on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?" on veterinary matters, on all
kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics; and have seen them give
tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the Siamese Twins, the Great
Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original Jacobs. Whenever somebody
is to lecture on a subject not of general interest, I know that my
venerated Remains of the Old Red Sandstone Period will be on the
platform; whenever a lecturer is to appear whom nobody has heard of
before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know that the real
benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage of, and that they
will be on the platform (and in the bills) as an advertisement; and
whenever any new and obnoxious deviltry in philosophy, morals, or
politics is to be sprung upon the people, I know perfectly well that
these intrepid old heroes will be on the platform too, in the interest
of full and free discussion, and to crush down all narrower and less
generous souls with the solid dead weight of their awful respectability.
And let us all remember that while these inveterate and imperishable
presiders (if you please) appear on the platform every night in the year
as regularly as the volunteered piano from Steinway's or Chickering's,
and have bolstered up and given tone to a deal of questionable merit and
obscure emptiness in their time, they have also diversified this
inconsequential service by occasional powerful uplifting and upholding of
great progressive ideas which smaller men feared to meddle with or
countenance. _

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