The Dougherty Lecture.

Sanders Theatre was filled last night with a large audience which listened to Mr. Dougherty's lecture with interest and enthusiasm. An unusually large number of the faculty were present. The audience filled nearly every seat in the ball. Owing to the tardiness of a number of those holding reserved seats, people with admission tickets were kept waiting a few minutes in the transept of Memorial. This also delayed the lecturer somewhat. The lecture began, however, a little before eight o'clock.

To describe Mr. Dougherty's lecture would be impossible. It was the sort of discourse over which the reporter lays down his pencil, forgets his task, and becomes absorbed in the speaker, along with the rest of the audience. Mr. Dougherty's subject was Oratory, and he used his theme to speak both of what orators are, and what they ought to be. The charm of the lecture, however, lay in the illustrations which the speaker applied to his subject. He told anecdotes in a way which convulsed his audience; he imitated the performances of orators, and would-be orators to perfection. In the more solid portions of his lecture, Mr. Dougherty was not so successful. His thought was good, but his delivery had the fault of its school. It was too oratorical-showing the speaker's art too perceptibly. Whenever he digressed into illustration, however, Mr. Dougherty was perfect. The audience certainly appreciated it, for Sanders rang with laughter, in a way which that staid old theatre has not witnessed since the class day of '84.

Mr. Dougherty closed by saying that the great days of oratory are over. Oratory fell when the printing press rose. The press appeals to thousands, the orator to a few hundreds only. At present the orator's speech is delivered for subsequent publication, not for its immediate effect upon the hearers.