Maud Ballington Booth: the little mother of the prisons

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MAUD BALLINGTON BOOTH
THE LITTLE MOTHER OF THE PRISONS

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REDPATH-SLAYTON LYCEUM BUREAU

REDPATH-BROCKWAY
Pittsburg. Pa.

BOSTON NEW YORK · PITTSBURG
COLUMBUS. OHIO · CHATHAM, ONT.
COLUMBUS, MISS. · CHICAGO · CEDAR
RAPIDS · KANSAS CITY · DENVER
SEATTLE · SAN FRANCISCO

REDPATH · PRIEST
Seattle, Wash.

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Maud Ballington Booth
In May of last year, Col. Willard French, a prominent editor of Washington, D. C., heard Maud Ballington Booth lecture and gave to one of the magazines a splendid article regarding her work, and we take pleasure in quoting the following excerpt:

Mrs. Booth is a mite of a woman.  'Little Mother' is her name among convicts and ex-convicts, from Maine to California, and she calls them all 'My Boys.'  But she is so brim full of savoir faire, of fire and energy, that you can think of her only as one who could easily move mountains—which she frequently does.  A mass of dark brown hair is constantly making bold dashes for freedom, encroaching on the smooth, broad forehead, and even on the straight dark eyebrows which emphasize the effect of brilliant, dark brown eyes.  It is a face that is supremely earnest—lovingly earnest—its instinctive tendency strengthened by a life-time of labor among the outcasts and outlaws.

You need not know Mrs. Booth, you need only a single glance to assure you that there is no cowardice about her; that she is the embodiment of beautiful, feminine courage.  But knowing the awfulness, even to a man, of facing an audience, I asked her once if she was never frightened when stepping out upon the platform.

'Not a bit,' she replied quickly.  'I thought I was going to be, at first.  You know I began public speaking when I was hardly seventeen.  But I talked it all over with myself.  I said: You have a message to deliver.  That is all there is to it.  You are nothing.  The message is everything.  I always remember that and the strength of the message strengthens me.'

What a simple secret it is and how persistently it crops out, with every effort that thrills, enthuses, inspires and conquers on the platform.  There are hosts of would-bes, wondering why they are not.  That is the secret.  'I have a message.'

There were certain disturbing conditions preluding that lecture at the Bellevue-Stratford.  But the message rose above the assault.  It was arranged for four o'clock, giving Mrs. Booth time for a day's work in her busy office in New York before leaving for Philadelphia; and I know that she had no time to waste, for I was chatting with her just before she went on the platform and she said: 'I really must finish in time to catch the five-fifty-seven train back to New York.'  But the celebrated Philadelphia jurist who introduced her was himself interested in another phase of prisons, and took the opportunity, parenthetically, to talk for forty-five minutes on the general construction and management of Pennsylvania's large penal institutions.  The great ball room was crowded with ladies—the cream of the
 cream.  There were very few men.  It was an audience which obviously had little time or temper for judicial considerations, and it certainly was trying to Mrs. Booth to sit out that three-quarters of an hour of precious time while her audience grew exhausted and the message had to wait.  She did it gracefully—for whatever she did would be gracefully done—but the triumph was the greater when, five minutes after she finally began, she held that hypercritical audience safely in the hollow of her small hand.

She is delightfully quiet and undemonstrative on the platform.  One could hardly be restless who simply watched, even without understanding a word.  She has the perfect composure of a personality wholly submerged in a message.  Her gestures are very few—mostly the open arms of sympathy.  Her remarkable voice is all music—penetrating, without a rasping note.  Her enunciation is perfect.  She told me once that she relied entirely upon pronunciation, slow and distinct, to carry her words to any distance; that she was never conscious of dropping a sense of conversation to stretch or crowd her voice.  It is obvious.  There is no apparent effort, neither is there any difficulty to hear.  I sat near the front.  The words were soft and musical.  Before the close I was forced to steal out, to keep another appointment.  Beyond the deep hall, out in the broad corridor, past the heavy curtains, I could still hear every syllable.

Her face, her manner, her sentiments are all the inspiration of earnestness, but there is no surfeit, for pathos and humor, comedy and tragedy, drift absolutely side by side down the same silver stream.  You laugh with tears in your eyes.  You applaud while indignation grits between your teeth.  And the silver stream glides on without a ripple.  Sentiment must hurry to keep pace with it.  The message was one from the shadows, inside and out, of prison walls; of the shadows and of the force and the strength and the value of sunshine which has penetrated and which can penetrate.  That picture speaks better than print is an old axiom.  Mrs. Booth simply puts it to new practice.  With beautiful words, in telling touches, she paints a picture in a paragraph that preaches a sermon, tells a tale, fastens itself indelibly.  For example: 'In slime and filth, at the bottom of a black, stagnant pool, five, eight, ten feet below the foul surface, there is a bud.  There is no power beneath to push it, but there is a power above.  The sun shines on the surface of the stagnant slime.  No one can see the bud.  No one suspects that it is there.  But the sun shines on the surface.  The deep hidden bud knows it, feels it, hears the call and responds.  Up and up and up, slowly it creeps through the filth and mud, seeking the sunlight, till finally it breaks from the slimy water.  It bursts open in the sunlight, and out of those foul depths has come a beautiful water-lily.  It is so that the soul of Hope comes through and out of a life of sin to answer the call of the sunlight of Love.'




In announcing the exclusive management of Maud Ballington Booth, we offer to Lecture Course Committees not only a celebrity whose name is a household word, but an orator whose natural eloquence has gained for her a prominent place among Lyceum stars.

A prominent Eastern manager has recently said of her: Mrs. Booth is the only woman orator of the decade whom the public will turn out and pay to hear.  Why?  First of all, she is the ablest woman orator in America.  Her cause is the most worthy.  She is probably the most beloved woman in the land; certainly she is the most attractive of all women speakers.  She has fire and magnetism—gifts of the highest oratorical order, sustained and animated by deep conviction, high purpose, and burning earnestness.  These great essentials are of paramount importance to success on the platform.

It has often been asked, Why do you not print press notices of Mrs. Booth?  We would not know where to begin, and certainly not where to end.  Her notices, and she has never had one single adverse criticism, would fill a book as large as Webster's Dictionary.  No other woman before the world has been so cordially received by the press, both in her lecture work and in her prison work, as has Mrs. Booth.  And why print press notices?  She is known and has been heard, and her beautiful voice with its message of love and good will to all men has been borne around the entire world, and she is rightfully called the most beloved woman in the land.

As an orator and a lecturer, she has received the highest praise in the finest Lyceum courses in the land, and with a very few exceptions, on account of illness, has never lost a date booked by her manager.  Every season the Bureau refuses enough dates to fill up the next season, and our list is always larger than she can possibly fill.  Mrs. Booth commands the highest price ever paid a woman lecturer in this country, and the money thus earned goes to support her two Hope Halls, homes for paroled and discharged prisoners.  This is her only reason for coming before the public, and the public has been most willing to hear her and to help her cause.  She has drawn the largest audiences of any lecturer in America, and therefore deserves the largest price, judged from a purely business standpoint.  Mrs. Booth's offices are in New York City; her home up in the Orange Mountains at Montclair, N. J., where she lives with her husband, Commander Ballington Booth of the Volunteers of America.  They have two children, Charles and Theodora.

Charles L. Wagner is Mrs. Booth's personal business representative and arranges all her tours.  Address Steinway Hall, Chicago.



SUBJECTS

Lights and Shadows of Prison Life
A Heart Story