Ralph Parlette

              Ralph Parlette


figure




The Editor of Lyceumite & Talent


The Orator of Good Cheer




C5 of Quality





Chicago-Mutual Lyceum Bureau


Chicago




Co-Operative Lyceum Bureau


Omaha




Chautauqua Managers Association


Chicago




Columbian Lyceum Bureau


St. Paul




Catholic Lyceum Bureau


Chicago








WHAT A PARLETTE LECTURE IS LIKE



T
HE BUZZ OF VOICES CEASES.  THE BABIES STOP CRYING.  THE FRONT row subsides.  The Prominent Citizen leads out on the stage a lank, awkward Man who will never learn how to wear good clothes.  The Awkward Man comes timidly forward after the introduction, trying to conceal his awkwardness, which makes it stick out.  He has faced thousands of audiences, but can't overcome it.  And this is Ralph Parlette, so loudly announced, so high-priced, so hard to get a date on!  This skinny, scared Man!  You feel disappointed and want to go home.  He feels the same way.  He commences to talk in an embarrased way and tries to forget his hands.  He grows a bit braver, and breaks into a smile.  The smile spreads out to the ears.  It is a very long smile.  You smile, too.  You commence to feel acquainted.  Then a left arm jabs into the atmosphere.  Some crooked fingers swish about.




Y
OU FORGET ALL ABOUT PARLETTE.  HE HAS DISAPPEARED.  THERE IS just a Voice in your ears, a Message pouring into your heart.  The Voice is strong, clear, compelling.  It is earnest, electrified.  It modulates soft as the song-bird's wooing.  It soars aloft in tremendous climaxes.  It sets off broadsides of awkward gestures, facial contortions and grotesque gyrations.  The air is full of flying fists, feet and coattails, first on one side of the stage, then on the other.  But all this harmonizes with the great, rugged Message pouring from the platform.  The Voice is in desperate earnest.




Y
OU ARE HEARING THE OLD, BALD-HEADED TRUTHS YOU HEARD BACK in the cradle.  But they come and grip you, wearing new neckties, and seem the most wonderful new discoveries.  They hit you square between the eyes, and you enjoy being hit.  Somehow you have stepped out of yourself and now see yourself from the outside.  What!  That sour, stingy, blind, deaf, deceitful, crooked old shell myself?  Have I been clammed up in that old shell all these years and missing all these good things?  What wonderful wealth all around I have never seen, what wonderful music I have never heard, what wonderful chances of doing things I have never noticed.  And those troubles and heartaches—why, I see they had to hit me to pound me into shape to fit!




A
ND YOU LAUGH EVERY LITTLE WHILE.  SO DOES THE VOICE.  YOU ARE looking at your troubles from the outside and you see they are to laugh at, not to weep over.  But every little while you stop laughing and wipe water out of your eyes, for the Voice has struck a tender chord.  You keep climbing little thought-eminences to look away at some marvellously beautiful word painting.  Ever as you come back, the laugh meets you, but the smoke of it clears away and leaves a great truth nailed to your soul.  And presently the Voice piles the truth and humor like brick and mortar higher and higher until it seems a mountain, then off you soar in one sublime final flight.




T
HE VOICE SOFTENS INTO A BENEDICTION.  THE LECTURE IS OVER.  The Awkward Man has returned and is leaving the stage with face illumined.  You come back to the same world you have lived in, but it will never be the same, for you have looked at it an hour thru Parlette's rosy spectacles.  You saw it so good and beautiful that you are glad you can go back to it, enjoy it more and live better than before, glad to go back home and face the struggle with a stouter heart.




Y
OU HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO THE MOST UNIQUE SPEAKER ON THE platform.  A preacher, philosopher, orator and humorist, all in one.  But he is not a 
funny man,
 he is intensely earnest.  The fun just falls in accidentally, and Parlette laughs at it as heartily as you do.  There is meat in the lecture for everybody, from the children in arms to the children in store-teeth, for saint and sinner.  You go home sorry the lecture is over and saying, 
Well, that was worth the price of the course.
  You didn't know a lecture could be so fascinating.  A year afterward you will be still quoting from Parlette's lecture.  And you will understand why the bureaus cannot meet all the demands for Parlette.




T
HIS IS THE COMPOSITE OPINION OF THE COMMITTEEMEN AND PRESS of America:  High moral tone.  Humor, with ever great truth behind it.  Fit for any pulpit.  Most unique blending of philosophy, humor and oratory ever heard.  And this the keynote to his success, as Parlette puts it:  
I don't care so much for the applause of the evening, as for the applause I would like to get next week or next month after the froth has blown away






SOME PARLETTE LECTURES



F
OR POPULAR COURSES




Pockets and Paradises
:
  Delivered a thousand times.  In which the richest man in the world tells what he owns and how he got it.  A lecture that leaves a profound impression in every community and has become a lyceum classic.


The University of Hard Knocks
:
  A powerful lecture, full of salve for the sore spots.  The President of the University tells the story of his own struggle and how the Needful and Needless Knocks have become 
Boosts.


Weighed in the Balances
:
  Many times pronounced a masterpiece.  In which is explained how a full-weight man is the noblest work of God—and the scarcest.




F
OR OTHER OCCASIONS




Uncle Sam Sermons
:
  The fruit of Parlette's researches in the Old World.  A rugged, reverent message dealing with the problems now confronting the New World.


Cheerful Christianity
:
  Has been put into hundreds of pulpits and Y. M. C. A.'s with the effect of a burst of sunshine down cellar.


The Foundations of Faith
:
  Has moved multitudes to the better life.


Kill the Snake—Now
:
  A temperance lecture that has helped decide elections.




These lectures are shortly to appear in book form.  Address Lyceumite & Talent, Steinway Hall, Chicago, Ill.





ABOUT PARLETTE'S PLATFORM WORK



S
IXTY PER CENT.  OF HIS ENGAGEMENTS IN OHIO LAST YEAR WERE returns in towns where he had spoken from twice to ten times.  Forty per cent. of all his bookings were returns.  Yet each year his price has risen.  The better he is known the more his demand.  Parlette has spoken to every kind of an audience from the cultured club to the grime-covered miners at the mouth of the shaft.  Few men are so able to adapt themselves to every occasion.  It is because he makes every occasion great, brings to it a great message, and sugar-coats it with a never-failing flow of humor.  From ocean to ocean, wherever a speaker is wanted he has appeared—on the great city courses, going back time after time, on the chautauqua platforms, before Y. M. C. A.'s, clubs, lodges, schools, commencements, institutes, and all other places of entertainment and uplift.





ABOUT PARLETTE HIMSELF



R
ALPH PARLETTE IS THE EDITOR OF LYCEUMITE AND TALENT, THE official organ of the lyceum and all pertaining, where with his high conception of the possibilities of the platform and his masterful pen he is doing the lyceum a great service.  Ralph Parlette was a country editor struggling with a mortgage on a meal ticket and faith in the future, both getting punched day by day.  He wrote stuff that made people laugh—and think at the same time.  His readers called him to the platform.  His success was immediate and emphatic.  He fills about two hundred engagements a year and carries on a vast amount of other work.  His editorial office has been a car seat since he began lecturing in 1896.  He has been in newspaper work for twenty years and still thinks the world is growing better.  He is a remarkable example of a writer who is also a speaker.  He has often been called 
The Charles Lamb of the Lyceum.





PARLETTE'S DREAM OF A UNIVERSITY



S
TRENGTH AND STRUGGLE ARE SIAMESE TWINS.  THE DREAM OF HIS life is to found a school of struggle, a real 
University of Hard Knocks.
  He would reproduce the world of books and bumps inside university walls.  Here have shops and factories.  Here admit all young people with two willing hands and empty pockets.  No one to receive money from the outside, but all to work part time and study part time.  Each to be paid in real money for his work and to finance himself while in the school on his own earnings, thus learning the greatest table of values, How many drops of sweat in the 
dollar of our daddies.
  And the reception America is giving the proposition would indicate that the Dream will become brick and stone.






WHY I AM A FAMOUS LECTURER



T
HIS LITTLE SATIRE ON THE ART OF LECTURING WAS DONE BY RALPH Parlette before the International Lyceum Association Stunt Club at Lake Winnebago, where it struck twelve.  It is reproduced, with the real Parlette poses, by Packard, as a characteristic humorous outburst.





ONE OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE OF THE GESTURES






THE WET CLIMAX:  VERY POPULAR AT CHAUTAUQUAS






R DRY CLIMAX






LET THE FINGERS FOLLOW THE WRIST-BUT NAIL THE WRIST SECURELY ON






GETTING NEXT TO THE HEART OF THE AVDIENGE





I
 HAVE OFTEN been asked to explain the secret of my marvelous success on the platform.  I am modest and retiring.  I would prefer to have others tell the story, but as they are too jealous to do it, and as I have no right to keep it back from the thousands now struggling to start, I'll tell it myself.




I owe my stupendous platform success to my great natural ability, coupled with long years of training.  Now, no one may hope to succeed as I have, because he hasn't the natural ability, but he may get some of the training.




My ancestry was unusual.  It is a great thing to have an ancestry.  Everyone should have as many ancestors as he can afford.  And great care should be taken in selecting ancestors.  The market is flooded with cheap imitations, containing whisky and harmful drugs.  All my ancestors will stand washing.  Ancestors of mine have scrubbed the floors for the first families of Virginia.  One of my ancestors was janitor in the Cradle of Liberty, one of them drove the bull at Run Run.  In fact, the first man back to Washington from Bull Run was an ancestor of mine.  Ancestors of mine are written over police dockets and inscribed on the almshouse scrolls.  Wherever there has been any pie to cut, there ancestors of mine have lined up at the counter.  My ancestors have all gone before me!  I am the whole thing!




The next thing is my fine natural appearance.  You must have a natural appearance.  It is rare that such beauty and grace are combined in the same person.  You notice it the minute I come upon the stage, and it grows upon you.  People always say I am the limit.  I was years learning to glide out on the stage.  You've got to get that glide.  I will glide again for you.  You see something dreamy and soulful about that glide.  Elias Day comes out as if he had tacks in his shoes.  Alton Packard bobs out like a camel crossing the desert.  Bingham is top-heavy with smile.  I am absolutely the only artist in the business who can glide.  Note that I come to the front of the stage to get near your hearts.  That is a great point.  Some try to do a tableau at the back.  Some ought to stay behind the scenery.  But I come sweeping out to the ragged edge and take you into my confidence.  I put one foot forward and the other back.  That is another great point.  Suppose I should put both feet forward and sit down on the footlights, what a panic would follow.




Notice my gestures.  I paid money for those gestures, and carry insurance on them.  I am the inventor and founder of the whole school of gesture.  Amherst Ott, Emerson and Byron King cannot even imitate me.  You can see just where every gesture is screwed on.  When I speak the immortal line, 
The sun in his iridiscent glory burst forth,
 I jab into the atmosphere with confidence.  I know where the sun burst forth and nail him in the act.  These Delsarte disciples wave their hand like they were afraid to tell where the bursting is going on.  I speak of the flowers that paint the laughing soil and the spires that pierce heaven's blue dome, and I thrill you with that compound fracture that took four years in the elocutionary hospital to get.  Always let your fingers follow your wrist.  That's a great point.  Suppose your wrist should go off and your fingers wouldn't follow!




Now I come to climaxes.  There are a lot of platform aspirants who wouldn't know a climax from a dill pickle.  A climax is the moment when the oratorical pot boils over.  Most babies cry here.  You've got to know about climaxes.  There are two kinds of climaxes—wet and dry.  Thomas E. Green has brought out a dry climax that needs a rigid spine and Swoboda.  The Guy Carleton Lee dry climax must be inflated with an auto pump.  Governor Hanly waves a flag.  Hobson throws his coat and expectorates at the map of Japan.




A good many do the wet climax, and make it pay dividends.  After tearing out handfuls of the horizon you see them melt into tears.  The tears, however, are not fresh each night—they are salty.  It is effective, but exhaustive, and students unable to get an onion, should wring out a wet sponge.




I will now tell you how I accomplish my terrific climax—the only sterilized and sanitary climax on the market.  I have offered to teach Leland Powers, Montaville Flowers and the rest of them my secrets, for I will be dead afterwhile and must pass them on.  To get this climax it is absolutely necessary to have a voice.  You must train your voice.  You must get your voice up in your nose to get the resonance.  Thus you need a nose—and a large one.  You should spend several years singing this:  
e-e-e-e.
  Notice it appears to come from my nose.  Go out and listen to the pigs squeal and do likewise.  I will sing that 
e-e
 clear up to the top of the keyboard.  I was years getting that.  You must learn to bite the tone off by the ears as it comes out.  While training your voice be careful of your diet.  Eat something every few days, if you have to steal it.  If you find that your tones don't mellow down like mine, chew up some laundry soap.  This will mellow the tones and make them cleaner.  It is a good plan at first to take each tone and rub it down with sandpaper or pumice stone.  I worked years under eminent teachers, who died, one by one.




I approach my climax boldly and grasp it by the tail.  I fear no climax, regardless of age, politics, color or previous condition of servitude.  I execute them all equally well.  I tear them to tatters.  Take, for instance, something Shakespearian, and see how I shake it.  Take that one of Mark Antony in that late unfortunate affair with Caesar.  You have read it all in the Sunday papers; how Caesar came to a bad end by mixing in politics, when he should have stuck to writing commentaries for high schools, where he was making a good living and paying off the mortgage.




First, picture the scene.  You must always picture the scene, even if you have to hang up a picture of the scene where a dull audience can see it.  Caesar is laid out, and the bier is ready.  This is a wet climax—therefore bier is permissible on the stage.  Caesar lies over there on the bier.  Brutus has gone out to buy crepe for his hat.  Mrs. Caesar is settling up with the insurance people.  The undertaker has agreed to furnish a funeral and eight carts for a hundred sestertia.  The newspaper reporters have all gone out.  Antony is left alone with the bier.  He approaches.  He is overcome with emotion.  He emotes.  You must learn how to emote.




O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth.  That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!




You note I start this down in the patent leather register.  See how he sticks to facts.  We have all been too meek and gentle with these butchers—and now we have the beef trust on our hands.  Truly, Shakespeare wrote for all times!




Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times.  Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!




Note that I let out a cog in my voice, and pull it up an inch.  Caesar had forty-eight holes in his hide, hence it is ruined and unsalable.  What good would it do to tell Caesar it could be patched up with court-plaster?




Over thy wounds now do I prophesy, Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—




You hear a new gurgle in my voice as it rises inch by inch.  You must understand each line.  Antony is prophesying.  What a wonderful outburst!  
Dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips.
  There are so many dumb mouths at work over the land.  Why can't they keep their ruby lips closed?  Speech and utterance mean the same thing, and Antony puts both in to fill up the line.  I have found it difficult to do any speech without utterance.  Now I jerk the throttle another notch—




A curse shall light upon the limbs of men!




He was thinking of mosquitoes and openwork sleeves.




And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, With Ate by his side, come hot from hell—




Antony is orthodox.  Caesar is accused of having gone to a hot place immediately after death.  This is a hard rub on Julius—sort of a roast—and is a meaner dig than Brutus gave him with his blade.




Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war!




Notice the crash on the last line.  I am at the top of my climax.  I have it by the neck.  I shake it, I crumple it like a cold-storage egg.  Not a dog of war, nor a cat of war, nor a man of war can escape my death grapple.  Here I pause with my voice high in the cerebellum, and hold it until the last armed foe slowly expires.  I sometimes have a brass band play accompaniments and here hit the bass drum.  Then as Caesar and Ate slowly return to their eternal bake oven, I add the final artistic swat:




That this foul deed shall small above the earth With carrion men groaning for burial.




Thank you for that burst of applause.  I take students during the summer at a hundred dollars for the plain, and two hundred dollars for the full ornamental and hysterical course.




LYCEUMITE PRESS PRINTERS & ENGRAVERS CHICAGO