James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[329] interest. The arrival of the great man is expected with eagerness. A committee of the village magnates meet him at the cars and escort him to his lodging. There has been contention who should be his entertainer, and the owner of the best house has carried off the prize. He is introduced to half the adult population. There is a buzz and an agitation throughout the town. There is talk of the distinguished visitor at all the tea-tables, in the stores, and across the palings of garden-fences. The largest church is generally the scene of his triumph, and it is a triumph. The words of the stranger are listened to with attentive admiration, and the impression they make is not obliterated by the recurrence of a new excitement on the morrow.

Not so in the city, the hurrying, tumultuous city, where the reappearance of Solomon in all his glory, preceded by Dodworth's band, would serve as the leading feature of the newspapers for one day, give occasion for a few depreciatory articles on the next, and be swept from remembrance by a new astonishment on the third. Yet, as we are here, let us go to the Tabernacle and hear Horace Greeley lecture.

The Tabernacle, otherwise called “The Cave,” is a church which looks as little like an ecclesiastical edifice as can be imagined. It is a large, circular building, with a floor slanting towards the platform—pulpit it has none—and galleries that rise, rank above rank, nearly to the ceiling, which is supported by six thick, smooth columns, that stand round what has been impiously styled the “pit,” like giant spectators of a pigmy show. The platform is so placed, that the speaker stands not far from the centre of the building, where he seems engulfed in a sea of audience, that swells and surges all around and far above him. A better place for an oratorical display the city does not afford. It received its cavernous nickname, merely in derision of the economical expenditure of gas that its proprietors venture upon when they let the building for an evening entertainment; and the dismal hue of the walls and columns gives further propriety to the epithet. The Tabernacle will contain an audience of three thousand persons. At present, there are not more than six speakers and speakeresses in the United States who can “draw” it full; and of these, Horace Greeley is not