Admiral Semmes as a Lecturer.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 122, 12 March 1872, Page 7

Admiral Semmes as a Lecturer.

I In "sketches of American men and women" ■by David M'Rae, the following is introduced ■of the late Rear Admiral Semmes of Alabama • fame who is now forced to earn his liveli- ' hood\is a lecturer : '*» It was now time for the lecture, so the -ijj a i or an d T went into the theatre at Mobile, and took our seats. There was a somewhat thin audience ; for most of the Southern people of the lecture-attending kind had been almost beggared since the war, and the charge that night'was, I think, a dollar. It was some time after the hour before Semmes made his appearance. At last he came stepping quietly upon the stage alone, his hat in one hand, his manuscript in the other. The audience, as is customary at such meetings in America, received him in silence.

I The Admiral, with Lis dark, weather-beaten ice and corsair look, seemed to find himself ut of his elemont standing in black clothes eliiiut a reading desk. His black eyes, ith a cast of sadness in them, glanced restjssly to different parts of the building ; and nee or twice he smacked his lips as if his louth were too dry. His voice was somehat weak, but he spoke distinctly ; and ive us an. exceedingly graphic and interestlg lecture, with abundant evidence in it of lought, culture, and literary power. There as even a touch here and there of the moral hilosopher. In describing his war upon the hale ships, he was led, by an nnlooked for ssociation of ideas, into a dissertation on the atural history of the whale, and the beautiil providential arrangement by which God rovides that animal with food, and prepares ; for the use of man. '' The same beneficent and that feeds the raven," said the Admiral

liously, "feeds the whale, carrying to it y the Gulf Stream the sea-nettle which it mnot go for itself." I thought if any New ork shipowner was present he would wonder hcther it was the same beneficent hand tat had carried the Admiral in the same ircction. There were very few peculiarities 1 his speech., except his Cockney-like addion of "r"in "Alabamar" and " idcar ;" [so his American pronunciation of "calmly," 3if it were spelt " kemly," and of " u" as it were " oo"—" We threw a shot astern hieli induoeed the merchantman to heave to." At the close of his lecture he described ifch great eloquence of language the beautid Sunday morning when he sailed his ship •nip. the Azores out upon the high seas ; and 'lion hv the first time the Confederate Hag wed from her peak, and the name was iven her that was so«n to he written before lie eyes of an astonished world. " 1 was at, her baptism," he said ; "-I was Lsn at her burial. Two years had passed, iAgiin it was a Sunday—the 19th of June—aphis was her funeral morning." He described , "•iliis light with the Kcarsage, and its result. r - ""Many," he said, with a touch of pathos, i ■"many went down with the ship that day t. who had stood with bare heads at her chris- - 0: jtening on that Sunday morning two years before." I And now for a moment the Admiral's voice jfrlcepened, and his dark eyes kindled with ' 1; lire, as he added, "No enemy's foot over - * "polluted her deck. No splinter of her hull, n . no shred of her Hag, remains as s, trophy in . ; the hands of the enemy !" This passage, iu newspaper phrase, "brought - felown the house." n : I had my thoughts that night as I sat lisc- Veiling to Semmes. Had the South achieved o: ■ Shcr independence, this man, who (all honor to i:' him) is now struggling by means of these leci, '»tTires to cam an honest livelihood, would have |3en one of the most important &nd proinijivtinen in the Dis-tmited States of America i-day. Success would have thrown out of ght the unpleasant fact in the history of ic ship, and Admiral Semmes would have Jen handed down to the admiration of pos•rity as the great captain who, with one lip, and in a few months, swept the American ag from the ocean. But the South fell, and orames (not Admiral at all) is called a pirate, icrc is some food for thought, if not seme round for charity.