“But,” said my military friend, “the war went on, and just the number of million dollars that Mr. Lincoln calculated would have been enough to make a reasonable purchase of all the slaves were spent in war, besides all the precious lives that were hurled away in 250 battles.”

There ought to be some other way for men to settle their controversies without wholesale butchering.

It was due partly to the national gloom that overspread the people during the Civil War that I took to the lecture platform actively.  I entered fully into the lecturing field when I went to Philadelphia, where DeWitt Moore, officer in my church and a most intimate friend, asked me to lecture for the benefit of a Ball Club to which he belonged.  That lecture in a hall in Locust Street, Philadelphia, opened the way for more than I could do as lecturer.

I have always made such engagements subordinate to my chief work of preaching the Gospel.  Excepting two long journeys a year, causing each an absence of two Sundays, I have taken no lecturing engagements, except one a week, generally Thursdays.  Lecturing has saved my life and prolonged my work.  It has taken me from an ever-ringing door-bell, and freshened me for work, railroad travelling being to me a recuperation.

I have lectured in nearly all the cities of the United States, Canada, England, Ireland and Scotland, and in most of them many times.  The prices paid me have seemed too large, but my arrangements have generally been made through bureaus, and almost invariably local committees have cleared money.  The lecture platform seemed to me to offer greater opportunity for usefulness.  Things that could not be said in the pulpit, but which ought to be said, may be said on the lyceum platform.  And there was so much that had to be said then, to encourage, to cheer, to brighten, to illumine the sorrow and bereavement.  From the first I regarded my lecture tours as an annex to my church.  The lecture platform has been to me a pastoral visitation.  It has given me an opportunity of meeting hundreds of thousands of people to whom, through the press, I have for many years administered the Gospel.

People have often asked me how much money I received for my lectures.  The amounts have been a great surprise to me, often.

For many years I have been paid from $400 to $1,000 a lecture.  The longer the journey the bigger the fee usually.  The average remuneration was about $500 a night.  In Cleveland and in Cincinnati I received $750.  In Chicago, $1,000.  Later I was offered $6,000 for six lectures in Chicago, to be delivered one a month, during the World’s Fair, but I declined them.

My expenses in many directions have been enormous, and without a large income for lectures I could not have done many things which I felt it important to do.  I have always been under obligation to the press.  Sometimes it has not intended to help me, but it has, being hard pressed for news.