One learns to make the most of their strong points and to carry off their weak ones, -- to take out the really good things which don't tell on the audience, and put in cheaper things that do.

All this degrades him, of course, but it improves the lecture for general delivery.
A thoroughly popular lecture ought to have nothing in it which five hundred people cannot all take in a flash, just as it is uttered.
-- No, indeed,--I should be very sorry to say anything disrespectful of audiences.

I have been kindly treated by a great many, and may occasionally face one hereafter.

But I tell you the AVERAGE intellect of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not very high.

It may be sound and safe, so far as it goes, but it is not very rapid or profound.