A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 19 



for which no fee is charged at the door. If special tickets 

 are sent us, another element of pleasure is added in a sense 

 of privilege and pre-eminence (pitiably scarce in a democracy) 

 so deeply rooted in human nature that I have seen people 

 take a strange satisfaction in being near of kin to the mute 

 chief personage in a funeral. It gave them a moment s ad 

 vantage over the rest of us whose grief was rated at a lower 

 place in the procession. But the words admission free at 

 the bottom of a handbill, though holding out no bait of in 

 equality, have yet a singular charm for many minds, especially 

 in the country. There is something touching in the con 

 stancy with which men attend free lectures, and in the honest 

 patience with which they listen to them. He who pays may 

 yawn or shift testily in his seat, or even go out with an awful 

 reverberation of cKticism, for he has bought the right to 

 do any or all of these and paid for it. But gratuitous hearers 

 are anaesthetized to suffering by a sense of virtue. They are 

 performing perhaps the noblest, as it is one of the most diffi 

 cult, of human functions in getting Something (no matter 

 how small) for Nothing. They are not pestered by the awful 

 duty of securing their money s worth. They are wasting \ 

 time, to do which elegantly and without lassitude is the 

 highest achievement of civilization. If they are cheated, it 

 is, at worst, only of a superfluous hour which was rotting on 

 their hands. Not only is mere amusement made more 

 piquant, but instruction more palatable, by this universally 

 relished sauce of gratuity. And if the philosophic observer 

 finds an object of agreeable contemplation in the audience, 

 as they listen to a discourse on the probability of making 

 missionaries go down better with the Feejee-Islanders by ba 

 lancing the hymn-book in one pocket with a bottle of Worces 

 tershire in the other, or to a plea for arming the female gorilla 

 with the ballot, he also takes a friendly interest in the lecturer, 

 and admires the wise economy of Nature who thus contrives 

 an ample field of honest labour for her bores. Even when 

 the insidious hat is passed round after one of these eleemosy 

 nary feasts, the relish is but heightened by a conscientious 

 refusal to disturb the satisfaction s completeness with the 

 rattle of a single contributory penny. So firmly persuaded 

 am I of this graft &amp;gt;y-instinct in our common humanity, that I 

 believe I could fill a house by advertising a free lecture on 

 Tupper considered as a philosophic poet, or on my personal 



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