Modern Eloquence (Volume 4); Lectures

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1900. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... ROBERT JONES BURDETTE THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MUSTACHE [Lecture by Robert J. Burdette, The Hawkeye Man, humorist (born in Greensborough, Penn., July 30, 1844; -), delivered originally in Western cities. This is called the best exposition of Mr. Burdette's humor as displayed in the several lectures of his series given since he first took the platform in 1876. At that time Mr. Burdette was managing editor of the Burlington Hawkeye, through which he won his reputation as a humorist, his humorous paragraphs and sketches, often tinged with gentle satire, first appearing in its columns some years before. Subsequently, Mr. Burdette became a licensed minister of the Baptist Church, but he continued on the lecture platform.] Lad1es And Gentlemen: --Adam raised Cain, but he did not raise a mustache. He was born a man, a full-grown man, and with a mustache already raised. If Adam wore a mustache, he never raised it. It raised itself. It evolved itself out of its own inner consciousness, like a primordial germ. It grew, like the weeds on his farm, in spite of him, and to torment him. For Adam had hardly got his farm reduced to a kind of turbulent, weed-producing, granger fighting, regular order of things--had scarcely settled down to the quiet, happy, care-free, independent life of a jocund farmer, with nothing under the canopy to molest or make him afraid, with everything on the plantation going on smoothly and lovely, with a little rust in the oats; army-worm in the corn; Colorado beetles swarming up and down the potato patch; cutworms laying waste the cucumbers; curculio in the plums and borers in the apple-trees; a new kind of bug that he didn't know the name of desolating the wheat fields; dry weather burning up the wheat; wet weather blighting the corn; ...