For  tea-meeting  or  "  soiree  "  addresses  Mr.  Gilfillan
was  much  in  request  in  Dundee  and  throughout
Scotland.  And  it  was  not  for  ordinary  reasons.  He


PUBLIC  LIFE,  1862-1878.  427

gave  to  each  gathering  of  the  kind  an  oration  which,
even  when  brief,  stimulated  thought,  revived  old
memories,  carried  hope  into  a  great  future,  bore  a
burden  of  severe  condemnation  of  public  iniquity,  or
rose  high  in  eulogy  of  some  hero  of  the  day.
A  fellow-minister  of  a  younger  generation,  who
knew  Gilfillan  well,  speaks  of  the  singular  skill  he
had  in  making  the  great  literary  names  of  the  earlier
century  potent  with  the  multitude.  A  church  "soiree"
is  not  the  most  keenly  intellectual  assembly  in  the
world,  yet  on  such  an  occasion  Gilfillan  would  appear
before  the  miscellaneous  audience,  and  instead  of
giving  the  usual  anecdotes  or  reduced  sermon,  he
would  start  off  with  a  reference  to  Shelley,  a  quota-
tion from  Coleridge,  a  resume  of  any  magazine  article
he  was  writing.  And  remote  as  the  topic  might  be,
he  never  failed  to  secure  attention.  Coleridge,  Foster,
Shelley,  and  De  Quincey  were  introduced  with  a
grand  persuasion  that  nothing  which  concerned  them
could  be  indifferent  to  a  thinking  being.  Such  confi-
dence brings  its  reward,  and  no  one  has  exercised  it
so  largely  as  Gilfillan.  By  his  own  proper  genius  he
did  what  Hazlitt,  with  far  more  technique,  far  greater
stores  of  material,  never  thought  of  doing.  Many  in
Dundee  and  elsewhere  found  new  interest  in  life  stirred
within  them  by  those  orations  to  the  people.
Somewhat  different  from  the  ordinary  "  soiree  "  was
that  which  celebrated  the  induction  of  some  young
minister,  or  the  jubilee  of  a  veteran  of  the  pulpit.
