Dr. James S. Kirtley

              DR. JAMES S. KIRTLEY

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TITLES of LECTURES

IN THE BAREFOOT KINGDOM
ACCUMULATED POWER
MUSIC AND FOLKS
THE WORLD'S ONE MAN
THE PEOPLE WE MEET



Season 1903=1904

I consider Dr. Kirtley one of the most interesting and most helpful speakers it has been my privilege to hear in Kansas City.—Prof. S. A. Underwood, Principal Westport High School.  Kansas City, Mo.




SKETCH of LECTURER
THE safest proof of the fitness of any man for a particular work is that the work finds him by an elective affinity.  Dr. James S. Kirtley has not sought the lecture platform, but its lights have beamed on him a welcome for years, and his occasional appearances have been flattering promises of his happy fitness to move the great public in the many moods of its feeling and fancy, his presence, voice, manner and culture giving him marked power.

Dr. Kirtley comes of a race of preachers, and has amply fulfilled the prophecies that went on before him.  In several cities in the South and West, but particularly in St. Louis and now in Kansas City, he has wrought in a ministry at once distinctive and honest.  His broad interest in all life, and in all thought, as made permanent in the best literature, makes any lecture that he gives a replica for the earnest man to hang up in the chamber of his soul.

We predict that the hydra-headed public, much as it may be at variance on a thousand questions, will agree that Dr. Kirtley's interpretations are true to the last word.  In the Barefoot Kingdom will answer in every feature to the mirror held for your inspection.  Dr. Kirtley finds something inspiring even in the most commonplace things—whether, therefore, he moves you to laughter in the unique catalogue of your boy's foibles, or draws taut for Music the strings of your soul, or points you to the Delectable Mountains as he tells you of the Son of Man, your feeling and outlook will be changed.  Many will be thankful that the conditions have been matured that have made it possible for Dr. Kirtley to see the platform lights more frequently.



SPILLMAN RIGGS WRITES
When I was a barefoot country lad in the hills of Kentucky and Dr. J. S. Kirtley was a seminary student he was my first pastor.  Eloquent then, as he is now, he thrilled me with an ambition to be, like him, a great public speaker.  I am still ambitious and to this day hold this man as one of my high ideals and hope sometime to speak as eloquently and as entertainingly as he does.

He guided my feet when I was in the Barefoot Kingdom and in his lecture he proves that he has gone to the top, while I still climb the ladder round by round.  His fame as Preacher, Author and Lecturer steadily grows.



SAID ABOUT HIS PLATFORM WORK
Press

The lecture entitled In the Barefoot Kingdom, delivered at Emanuel Church Friday evening by Dr. J. S. Kirtley, brought out an unusually large audience.  The lecture is highly instructive and pleasantly interspersed with brilliant humor.  It grows in interest from the beginning to the end.  Dr. Kirtley is a speaker of rare ability.—
Kansas City Times.


His subject, Music and Life, was presented in an especially pleasing and forcible manner, and the lecture throughout was replete with beautiful and original thought.  He not only succeeded in impressing his audience that music in its purity is a divine link connecting man with his Maker, and in all ages it has been an incentive to grand and noble deeds, the most refined and elevating art that adorns modern culture, but that it is a vital accessory in making men and women what they should be in this world.—
Marshall, Mo., News-Democrat.


Dr. Kirtley's lecture was a masterpiece of thought and his audience was fairly carried away by his eloquence and earnestness of expression.  His lecture grew more interesting from beginning to end, and was full of wit and humor.  Those who heard Kr. Kirtley were neither surprised nor disappointed.  He gave them just what they expected and his remarks were listened to with the very best of interest.—
Blackwell, O. T., Daily News.



A FEW OUT OF MANY
NOTICES
Personal
Dr. Kirtley is an orator and a scholar.  His clean-shaven face and cameo-cut features are the indices of his intellect.  His Barefoot Kingdom is like a crystal chandelier—brilliant whichever way you look at it.  He knows so well how to bring up other folks' children that I am almost sorry he didn't bring me up.—Mr. Fred Emerson Brooks, the California poet-humorist, New York City.

I have heard the lecture by Dr. Kirtley, In the Barefoot Kingdom, and consider it worthy to rank with the best things on the platform.  In humor, eloquence and sentiment, it is a gem, and I would willingly pay the price of admission two or three times to hear it again.—E. W. Stephens, proprietor of the Herald, Columbia, Mo.

Dr. Kirtley is a man of culture.  I have heard his lecture, In the Barefoot Kingdom, and pronounce it very entertaining and instructive.—J. P. Greene, President William Jewell College.

I have heard Dr. Kirtley in addresses to teachers and to students, and I take pleasure in saying that his easy address, and his pleasing, well modulated voice, together with his thorough knowledge of his subject, make him a very entertaining as well as instructive speaker.—Prof. G. M. Morrison, Prin.  Manual Training High School, Kansas City, Mo.

A charming speaker, having a bright personality; he always lifts upwards.—J. M. Greenwood, Supt. Kansas City Schools.




SAID ABOUT HIS LATE BOOK
THE YOUNG MAN AND HIMSELF
now being widely circulated by the Monarch Book Company, Chicago
Press

Kansas City Journal:
No book ever produced for young men has analyzed the subject thus thoroughly.  Every topic of importance to their life is discussed with great force and with much brilliant quotation from men of all callings and experiences.


Epworth Herald:
Books for young men are abundant.  Not all of them are worth while.  But this one by Rev. J. S. Kirtley, D. D., is so well-planned, so carefully and sanely wrought out, and so broad in its scope, that it deserves wide circulation.  It covers the whole range of things in which a young man is interested, and is in every page a safe guide and counselor.  Dr. Kirtley is a successful preacher and a thoroughly trained man of affairs.  He knows his subject and he knows young men.


The Baptist Argus:
It is just such a book as young men and boys should have, and the writer is just the man to make the book.


Arkansas Methodist:
Every element of good character, and every exercise which goes to make good character are discussed.


Louisville Evening Post:
Dr. Kirtley writes with great zeal, earnestness and faith.  He has no false ideas of success, but holds that all true, whole men succeed, and he would make them true and whole.  He is liberal in his citations from the great prose writers and the great poets, whom he summons to enforce his lessons.  It makes altogether a unique book, and one which will doubtless have a wide circulation.


The Outlook:
A book of wise counsel, with many incidents of men who have achieved honorable success.


Religious Herald:
This book by Dr. Kirtley is a timely arrival in the war which virtue wages on vice.  It is certainly one of the worthiest members in that large class of excellent literature which is designed to cheer, to move and inspire our boys and young men.  It is the choice book for young men.  Boys will be charmed with it.


The Nashville American:
This is a sound, bright book for young men, about young men, by a young man.  Dr. Kirtley is one of the best-known Baptist ministers in America.  A preacher of uncommon force and elegance, he has perhaps more ability as a writer.  In the volume before us the thought is clear and wholesome; the style is fluent and eloquent; and the spirit of the book is uplifting, even inspirational.  The ethical value of the book is immense.  Each of the themes is discussed in an easy, logical order, with a rare wealth of choice historical, literary and scientific illustration, and luxuriously adorned with apt and beautiful quotations.  It is easy to read Dr. Kirtley's book.  Once you begin, you are held to the closing paragraph, and you close the book feeling that you can be a man of honor and power.


Kansas City World:
As the youth of a country, so is its future.  The entire solution of the young man problem may be found in this book.


Baptist and Reflector:
A more unique and timely volume has not appeared in recent print.  The author, with singular research and ability, with great originality and versatility, has touched every key upon the varied diapason of the young man's life; and whatever would conduce to character and success, whether in the negation of evil or in the cultivation of good, is brought out with masterful force and ingenuity—with such rich, rare and racy vigor as to make his book an irresistible charm to the reader.  There is not a dry chapter nor a stale sentence in the whole work; and though there are seventy chapters, generally brief and full of merit, it does not seem that one of them could be abridged or a sentence left out.


The Standard:
The popular Baptist pastor of Kansas City, Dr. J. S. Kirtley, has seen more of young men and their needs than falls to the lot of many ministers.  He has during his ministry associated himself very closely with the young men not only of the church but of the community, and has learned to know the strength and the weakness, the ambitions and the temptations, which are peculiar to young manhood.  The shrewd and forceful essays are enlivened with a multitude of anecdotes, wise sayings, and quotations collected from the reading of years.  The standard writers as well as recent books and magazines are drawn upon for illustrations.  Certainly Dr. Kirtley has succeeded in making a readable book, and any appearance of dryness suggested by the topics will be at once removed when the reader dips into a chapter here and there, noting the fresh and apt quotations, the epigrammatic sayings, the sensible yet elevating consideration of moral and social questions.  The ideal of manhood here set up is well round
ed; it is the ideal of a man who shall be successful in the best sense of the word, as well as good.  There is no shallow materialism, no worship of merely material success; neither is there an ascetic indifference towards the rewards of fame and wealth and honor which all right-minded young men look upon with desire.  Dr. Kirtley has enriched his book by the inclusion of a remarkable list of nearly seventy half-tone page portraits of successful living Americans, in politics, the professions, business, authorship, etc.  Each person who allowed the use of his photograph in this connection sent also a sentiment appropriate to some chapter of the book, and the reader has thus not only a collection of portraits which could scarcely be brought together elsewhere, but a considerable number of epigrammatic quotations not previously published, from men prominent in contemporary life.  Any young man, or middle-aged man, or old man, for that matter, would be the better for imbibing some of the breezy optimism and he
althful moral vigor of these well-written chapters.


Word and Way:
One is chained to the book when he first takes it into his hand.


Louisville Christian Observer:
Dr. Kirtley's book will find a wide welcome in our State and we commend it especially to all the homes where are boys and young men.




PERSONAL WORDS
onTHE YOUNG MAN AND HIMSELF
Dr. Henry Hopkins in letter to author: I congratulate you on the production of such a book.  Here are seventy diverse topics, all of vital interest to thoughtful young men, presented in a way to gain and hold attention.  Your book does not theorize or sermonize or much moralize.  What it has to say is presented in a direct, friendly, telling way, backed up by concrete illustrative instances; indeed, it is par excellence a book of instances collected with immense industry and arranged with genuine literary skill.  I would not know where to find such a rich and varied collection of biographical facts and memorable sayings.  It will make an engaging, wholesome and stimulating volume.  I shall hasten to send it to certain young men friends of mine.

Dr. W. A. Quayle: The work is rare, wholesome, broad, manly, like its author.

Judge Jonathan Heralson: It contains a vast amount of information I have never seen collected in one volume before.

S. B. Capen: I congratulate you on so valuable a publication.

Dr. Nicolas Senn: It should be in the hands of every young man, as it will be of the greatest service in directing his course through life and imbuing him with the sublimest ideals of manhood and duty.

Gov. Alva Adams: The idea and plan of the book are so unique you could get a patent on it.  If our young men will adopt it as their moral and business gospel, it will give us a generation of manly and great men.

Prof. S. M. Greenwood, Superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools: I have no hesitancy in recommending it as one of the most inspiring works ever written for young men.  It is pure, wholesome, elevated in thought and diction, yet always dealing with the possible.  My wish is that every young man in this vast country of ours should read it and take deeply to heart the great truths it teaches.

Gen. W. S. Shallenberger: The book is unique, original, and intensely interesting.

Pres. W. H. P. Faunce: It is certainly a unique book, a wise counselor in the great fundamental virtues of life.

Gov. E. M. Drake: A beautiful and instructive book.

Hon. E. W. Stephens: I do not know of any other book of the kind that so well fills its place.

Dr. J. P. Greene: No better book for boys and young men has ever come from the English press.

Hon. Hoke Smith: It will do great good.

Hezekiah Butterworth: It is a needed work.

Dr. James W. Lee: You have given us one of the most useful and entertaining books I have seen in many a day.  Every young man in the Union ought to get a copy and read it every day.  What a vast amount of research and study it discloses.  I congratulate you most heartily, and predict for this magnificent guide to manhood a wide sale.

Dr. Henry Hopkins in the introduction: A unique volume.  It is believed to be wholly unlike any other offered to the people of our time.  It cannot fail to be interesting and ought to be most stimulating and helpful.

Dr. E. Y. Mullins, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: The book is an inspiring call to young men to noble living.  The style is graphic and forcible.  The subjects dealt with go to the heart of things, and yet every chapter is intensely practical.  The book cannot fail to prove of untold value to every young man who reads it.

Judge C. D. Wood: Next to the Bible I would rather my boys would read it than any book I know.



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