The B. R. Baumgardt lectures

              Figure

The
B. R. Baumgardt Lectures


The B. R. Baumgardt Lectures

Exceedingly Timely Subjects

The Present Crisis in Europe
World Problems Today
Crucified Russia; the Slav, the Dreamer
Kemal Pasha and the New Republic of Turkey
Palestine before and after the Mandate
America's Part in Human Progress

Steps in the History of Civilization

The Romance of Civilization
The Dawn of Civilization in the Valley of the Nile
Life, Art and Thought in Ancient Greece
Rome and the Birth of the Political Instinct
Civilization's Indebtedness to the Moor and Jew
The Renaissance in Italy
Modern Civilization and Guesses at the Future

Popular Lectures on Science

An Evening with the Stars.  (Illustrated)
The Stars Told to Children.  (Illustrated)
Darwin and the Theory of Evolution
Einstein and the Theory of Relativity

Representative Men of Genius

Pericles, Greatest of Statesmen
Joan of Arc; Intuition and Inspiration.  (With or without illust.)
The Genius of Shakespeare
Napoleon Bonaparte.  (With or without illustrations)
Life and Aims of Richard Wagner

History, Art and Educational Travel

France and the French People.  (Illustrated)
Paris, the Historic City.  (Illustrated)
The Fjords of Norway and the Midnight Sun.  (Illustrated)
Switzerland, the Ideal Republic.  (Illustrated)
Sweden and the Swedes.  (Illustrated)
London after the Great War.  (Illustrated)
Petrograd and Moscow; the Revolution in Russia.  (Illustrated)
Vienna and Budapest.  (Illustrated)
Spain and the Alhambra.  (Illustrated)
Ireland and the Irish People.  (Illustrated)
Scotland in Song and Story.  (Illustrated)
Shakespeare's England and the English Lake District.  (Illust'd)
Castles and Legends of the Rhine.  (Illustrated)

Seven Special Lectures on Italy

Venice, the City of Golden Dreams.  (Illustrated)
The Italian Lakes and Riviera.  (Illustrated)
Florence Today and in the Days of the Medici.  (Illustrated)
Rome; Ancient, Medieval and Modern.  (Illustrated)
The Vatican and Its Art Treasures.  (Illustrated)
Pompeii, the City of the Dead.  (Illustrated)
Sicily and the Shores of Paradise.  (Illustrated)

Four New Lectures on the Near East

Egypt and the Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen.  (Illustrated)
Jerusalem and the Hills of Judea.  (Illustrated)
Athens, Arcadia and the Isles of Greece.  (Illustrated)
Constantinople.  (Illustrated)

See Your Own Country First

California and the High Sierras.  (Illustrated)
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado.  (Illustrated)
The Yellowstone National Park.  (Illustrated)
Glacier, Rainier and Crater Lake National Parks.  (Illustrated)
Hawaii, Paradise of the Pacific.  (Illustrated)


Note.  Where the word Illustrated appears it signifies that the lecture is given with lantern views.  These colored illustrations, (the art of Mrs. B. R. Baumgardt), should not be confounded with ordinary slides.  They bear directly on the subject, are seldom introduced for effect, and are of high artistic and educational value.



A Word from the Managers
FEW MEN today on the lecture platform are better known or in greater demand than Mr. Baumgardt.  His reëngagemnts year after year on the leading platforms, educational institutions and clubs throughout the land testify to his popularity with all kinds of audiences.  I regard him as one of the most useful and desirable lecturers now available, says the Director of the League for Political Education in New York City.  His remarkable skill as a lecturer, combined with an inexhaustible fund of information, keeps him in continual demand in this country and abroad, says Columbia University Arts and Sciences Bulletin.  A complete list of Mr. Baumgardt's lectures, illustrated and unillustrated, is given by title on this page.  All bear on one theme, The History Civilization.  No matter what the subject, educational travel, history, science or art, Mr. Baumgardt's remarkable memory and ability to marshal facts, make it intensely interesting and of education value.



A Remarkable Return Record


National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.
18 lectures


Tremont Temple Courses, Boston
21 lectures


Carnegie Hall, New York
31 lectures


University of Chicago Extension
24 lectures


Kansas City University Extension Society
12 lectures


University of California Extension
32 lectures


American University Extension, Philadelphia
86 lectures


League for Political Education, New York
49 lectures


Belasco Theater Sunday Courses, Washington, D.C.
19 lectures


Columbia University, Inst. of Arts and Sciences, New York
17 lectures


American Institute, New York City
25 lectures


Brooklyn Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y.
92 lectures


Accdemy of Sciences and Arts, Pittsburgh, Pa.
24 lectures


Goodwyn Institute, Memphis, Tenn.
30 lectures


Academy of Scieuces, Los Angeles
23 lectures


The Scottish Rite, Los Angeles
58 lectures



B. R. BAUMGARDT.  (From Who's Who?)
of English and Swedish extraction.  Educated in Sweden; graduate of Strengnas College.  Special studies in history, astronomy and mathematics.  Secretary Oregon Academy of Sciences 1892; President S. California Academy of Sciences 1901-1905; Chairman Astronomical and Mathematical Section 1895-1905.  Extensive traveler and explorer.  Has private astronomical observatory with four and one-half inch telescope.  Staff lecturer: Brooklyn Institute, American Institute of New York, League for Political Education of New York, Academy of Sciences and Arts of Pittsburgh, National Geographic Society of Washington, Institute of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University, Goodwyn Institute, Memphis, Tennessee; Clubs, Transportation Club, New York City; Explorers' Club of America, New York City; Hon. Member University Club, Los Angeles; Hon. Member Gamut Club of Los Angeles; Hon. Member California Camera Club, San Francisco; Hon. Member S. California Academy of Sciences; Hon. Member of Astronomical Society of Los Angeles; Hon. Member American Institute, New York City.  Thirty-third degree Scottish Rite Mason.




The Frontiers of the Universe
Mr. Baumgardt's latest lecture on An Evening with the Stars
A remarkable presentation of recent celestial photography with the greatest telescopes in existence, so simply told that a child can understand.


Detail from first photograph taken of the Moon with the giant telescope on Mount Wilson, Cal.


AN Evening With the Stars is Mr. Baumgardt's best-known lecture.  It is one of the foremost popular lectures on the American platform.  Ever new, always revised and kept down to date, abreast with the most recent explorations of the starry universe with the world's greatest telescopes, and illustrated with the latest achievements in celestial photography; presented in language so simple that even a child can understand, it conveys to the mind graphically, poetically what everybody ought to know about the wonders of the starry universe.  The lecture is a celestial journey, far more wonderful than that of Aladdin on the enchanted carpet; it is a journey to the frontiers of our universe, billions of miles away in the bosom of immeasurable space.  On the wings of science we traverse the circuit of the universe, and are then brought safely back again to our earth.



Egypt and the Nile Valley
Including a Visit to Tut-Ankh-Amen's Tomb

Children play today in the stupendous ruins of what was once The Temple of Luxor; while close by from the minaret the muezzin is calling the faithful to prayer where forty centuries ago the people of Thebes prayed to Amen Ra, Mut and their son Khonsu.


IT IS scarcely possible to exaggerate the awe and fear with which the ancients looked upon the enchanted valley of the Nile, the land of mysteries and marvels, shut out from the rest of the world by a system of rigorous exclusion.  Adventurious pirates reported that in their stealthy visits they had seen great pyramids covering acres of ground; colossi sitting on granite thrones, portrait statues of kings approaching nature with remarkable ease and fidelity, pharaohs who ruled in the dawn of the world; gigantic monolithic obelisks, carved from single blocks of stone and covered with mysterious inscriptions in characters unknown; avenues of sphinxes miles long leading to prodigious pillared temples.  Even today Egypt retains much of its mystery and fascination.  We reflect with astonishment upon the fact that the masonry of the Great Pyramid, almost six thousand years old, has never been surpassed.  It has stood the test of time while the heavens have changed, the Pole Star itself being a stranger today.  Among the thirty dynasties of kings who ruled Ancient Egypt there stand forth the names of many mighty pharaohs, Menes, Khufu, Chephren, Usertsen, Thotmes III, Memnon, Rameses II, Necho.  Best known today, though least known but a few years ago, is Tut-Ankh-Amen, whose tomb, recently discovered by Howard Carter, with its amazing wealth of funerary furniture, thrones, chariots, caskets, golden beds, coronation chair, a veritable Arabian Night treasure house of ancient art, has proved to be the most sensational discovery in the history of Egyptology.




Constantinople

When in 537 Justinian beheld the completed St. Sophia, and dedicated it to heavenly wisdom, he is said to have exclaimed:  O Solomon, I have surpassed thee.  Originally a christian church, it has been a Moslem mosque since the days of the conquering Mohammed II in 1453.


AFTER Constantine the Great had murdered his son, Crispus, and had caused his wife, Fausta, to whom he had been married twenty years and with whom he had three children, to be suffocated in a steambath, a pasquinade appeared on his palace gate in Rome.  The guilty emperor resolved on a deadly revenge on the populace of Rome.  He decided to transfer the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium, the thousand-year-old city on the shores of the Bosporus.  The choice of site was certainly a wise one, for Imperial Constantinople was destined to have a longer history than Imperial Rome.  Constantinople, says Freeman, is a city which while other cities have risen and fallen, has for fifteen hundred years, in whatever hands, remained the seat of Imperial rule; a city which, as long as Europe and Asia, as long as land and sea, keep their places, must remain the seat of Imperial rule. The other capitals of Europe seem by her side but things of yesterday.  But the city of Constantine abides, and must abide, the strategic place of earth.  In the hands of Roman, Frank, Greek and Turk, her Imperial mission has never left her.



Jerusalem and the Hills of Judea, Samaria and Galilee

Jerusalem as seen from the Mount of Olives.


WHILE it is undoubtedly true that the many changes and revolutions during the past twenty centuries have caused Jerusalem to fall from her once high estate, and that within her walls there are but few authentic sites to connect us with the past, it is equally true that this does not hold good beyond the walls of the Holy City.  Nature does not change.  The environs of Jerusalem are today as they were two thousand years ago.  The Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, the Valley of Jehosaphat, the Valley of Hinnon, Emmaeus, Bethlehem, Bethany, Hebron, Jericho, the Jordan and the Dead Sea, are today more or less the same as when Christ moved in their midst.  Jerusalem itself is a City Set on High, with walls around it, from which we look down on the plains below, where from the earliest times army after army has arrayed itself against the city, Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Roman, Arab, the successive armies of the toilworn Crusaders under Tancred, Godfrey of Bouillon and Lion-Hearted Richard.  Last of all came the victorious English army under Allenby.  The noble Mosque of Omar, perhaps the finest mosque in the world, still rises over the summit of Mount Moriah, where once was sustained the Temple of Solomon.  Beyond this hill is that of Zion, the Tower of David, the gates of St. Stephen and Damascus, and beyond the walls Calvary with its Garden Tomb.


On the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.





Scotland in Song and Story

In the footsteps of Robert Burns.  The Auld Brig o' Doon, Alloway and the Ayr cottage where the poet was born.


TO WALTER SCOTT and Robert Burns Scotland owes much for revealing to the world her witchery of the present and glamor of the past.  It has made of Scotland a place of pilgrimage.  With his pen in the quiet of Abbotsford Scott accomplished as much for the fame of his country as did Wallace, Bruce, Rob Roy, or any of the great patriots and heroes of the past.  Without his work it is to be doubted whether these heroes would have been much heard of beyond Scotland.  Robert Burns, on the other hand, in never-to-be-forgotten poetry and song, gave voice to the passionate heart of the people of Scotland, their mirths and sorrows, their hopes and fears, ambitions and regrets.  Hardly a spot can be found in Scotland over which the genius of these two great men has not cast its spell.  Abbotsford, Dryburgh, Melrose, Edinburgh, are in particular associated with Scott; Air and Dumfries with Burns. It is interesting also in Scotland to trace the tragic history of the beautiful but unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, from her birth at Linlithgow to her tragic end.  Stirling, Dumbarton, Dunbar, Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood, Craigmillar, Carberry, Hill, Loch Leven and Hardwick Hall, are all associated with the memory of Mary Stewart.  But to many, however, Scotland will be longest remembered on account of her remarkable and varied scenery, her pastoral and picturesque landscapes in the Lowlands; the grand and sublime scenery of the Highlands; the irresistible charms and fascination of her hundreds of Lochs and Trossachs; the titanic scenery on her coasts and Western Islands.



Ireland and the Irish
Before and after the Revolution

Thackeray said: Muckrose, a few miles from Killarney, is the prettiest little ruin of an abbey ever seen—a little chapel with a little chancel, a little cloister, a little dormitory, and in the midst of the cloister a hugh yew-tree.


IRELAND wins our affections from the first.  Her graceful, undulating and verdant hills, green to their summits, her pastoral, sylvan scenery, comparable to that of the English Lake District, her glorious river, Shannon, her matchless Killarney, her Giant's Causeway in the north — who can help loving a land that WOOS us with so many charms?  She is rich, too, in interesting memorials of the past, cromlechs from the Stone Age and that of the Druids; remarkable Round Towers, so peculiar to Ireland, which are always found in connection with early Christian settlements; and many other priceless treasures from early Christianity.  Too far away from the European Continent and too near powerful England for her own good, the history of Ireland has been one of arrested development, and a continuous struggle for independence, which has at last been brought to a successful issue.  But in spite of warfare, poverty, and hardship, the Irish have always been a remarkable people and have contributed much to help the human race forward.  Call the roll of their great men.  Wellington, Kitchener, Roberts, defenders of the British Empire; Burke, Grattan, and O'Conner, patriots and statesmen; Thomas Moore, the poet; Lecky, the historian; Goldsmith, author of The Vicar of Wakefield; Dean Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels; Sheridan, the dramatist; Boyle, Tyndall, and Lord Kelvin, the scientists; Sir William Rowan Hamilton, eminent mathematician; Erigina and Berkeley, the philosophers; Balfe, the composer of The Bohemian Girl, and Wallace, of Maritana.




A Ramble through Sicily

The finest view in Italy is at Taormina, with the remarkable ruins of the Greek Theater in the foreground. Aetna, nearly eleven thousand feet high, is seen snow-clad to the summit, and framed as it were by the graceful ruins of the justly celebrated Greek Theater.


THE SITUATION of Sicily between Africa and Europe has made the island of great political importance.  The truth is that it has been fought over again and again for nearly thirty centuries in the past until one may almost say that every stone has been bathed in blood.  Here in prehistoric times was the seat of the worship of Ceres, one of the most ancient of religions, and remains of this early period are met with frequently.  Sicily was the home of Pindar, who for a time lived at the court of Hieron in Syracuse.  Empedocles was born at Agrigentum.  Archimedes, one of the greatest men of science, lived at Syracuse.  Upon the shores of this island the power of Athens was broken.  Carthaginian and Roman fought over the island from end to end.  Byzantine, Goth and Vandal contended here for empire.  Then the Saracen wrested it from the loosening grasp of effete Byzantine rulers.  Later came the Normans as conquerors and ruled the land with wisdom and toleration.  Barbarossa's grandson, Frederick II, the Wonder of the World, one of the world's most enlightened monarchs, ruled Sicily at one time.  Here was accomplished that frightful vengeance, the Sicilian Vespers, which left no man, woman, nor child, of French birth alive.  And here, after centuries of oppression, the noble thousand under Garibaldi, drove out the Bourbons and made possible the fulfillment of the dream of United Italy.  Such is the interesting past of this beautiful island, The Garden of the World.  Sicily is perhaps the most beautiful part of beautiful Italy, with its gorgeous sunsets and sunrises of almost oriental splendor, with its delicate opalescent distances and jewel-like seas.  Who can ever forget a sunrise over the Calabrian Bay as seen from Taormina, the most beautiful spot on earth, with silent Aetna smoking in the background?



Napoleon Bonaparte

THE RETURN FROM RUSSIA


NAPOLEON will live when Paris is in ruins.  Even Welling ton said that no man has ever surpassed the French emperor in the clearness of his ideas or the stretch of his glance into the depths of futurity.  The time will no doubt come when his many victories on the battlefield shall be but so many echoes of the past, but never the time when what he brought about through his statesmanship shall be forgotten.  If greatness stands for strength and power and capacity for great achievements, then, by all standards, human and divine, Napoleon was great; so great that ordinary measures do not apply.  We seem to be measuring a mountain with a tape.  No wonder that in France they still conjure with the name of this mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream.



Municipal and Civic Centers

The Forum of Ancient Rome.


THE first and perhaps unrivaled Civic Center was the Athenian Acropolis, planned and built by Pericles five centuries before Christ, as a victory memorial after the overthrow of the Persians.  The same spirit was shown by the Romans, when, after the conquest of the Mediterranean world, they made their Forum the palpitating heart of the world, one of the noblest civic centers of all times, teeming with palaces,




SHAKESPEARE
And Shakespeare's England

Old London Bridge, as it appeared in the days of Shakespeare


APILGRIMAGE from London to that region of England where once was past the youth and last years of the maker of our stately English speech is of great interest to all lovers of poetry.  To stroll through the quaint streets of Warwick and among the ruins of Kenilworth, familiar ground to the youthful Shakespeare; to approach Stratford-on-Avon by the way of Charlecote and Hampton Lucy, or over the Clopton Bridge, is to feel at every turn a vague sense of some great impending grandeur, to feel ourselves in the shadow of the great spirit who cast a spell over the region.

The Shakespeare associations at Stratford keep a parennial freshness and though three centuries old are not yet stricken with ruin or decay.  Here we may still tread the paths trod by the great poet on his earthly pilgrimage.  In Henley street we enter the house in which he first saw the light of day.  Over it there broods the sense of some tremendous energy stricken dumb, past and gone forever.  Close by is the old grammar school where the boy Shakespeare studied small Latin and less Greek.  A pretty foot-path leads to mile-distant Shottery, where at eighteen he won the heart of Anne Hathaway.  The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time has dealt gently with the cottage and in the garden is still a bank where the wild thyme blows, and daffodils, that come before the swallow dares—violets dim, but sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, that die unmarried. Surely Shakespeare is his own biographer, speaking to the Shakespeare within us.


Figure


The superbly colored lantern views in this lecture are probably as artistic slides as have ever been thrown on a screen.  They faithfully follow the lecturer in the itinerary from London to Windsor, Eton, Slough, Oxford, Banbury, Warwick, Kenilworth and Stratford-on-Avon.



The World's Great Dreamers
A course of six unillustrated lectures

Plato.  The Consummation of Intellectual Happiness
It was a beautiful conception of Plato that ideas are connected together by others of a higher order; and these, in their turn, by still higher ideas; their generality and power increasing as we ascend, until finally a culminating point is reached—at last, a supreme, an all-ruling idea, which is God.—Draper.



Joan of Arc.  Intuition and Inspiration
The history of Joan of Arc is as mysterious as it is remarkable.  We cannot pretend to explain the surprising story of the Maid of Orleans, the prophetess, the heroine, the saint of French patriotism.  That she believed herself inspired, few will deny; that she was inspired, few will venture to assert.



Goethe.  The Poetic Interpretation of Nature
If we look back upon the Goethe's long life, it is impossible not to be struck with admiration when we think of the extraordinary range of his activity.  There are few departments of intellectual life into which he did not penetrate.  Everywhere he displayed the highest order of mental power.  It is only, indeed, since the law of Evolution was detected, that the world has recognized the full meaning of his contributions to scientific progress.—Sime.



Napoleon.  World Statesmanship
Was Napoleon a great man?  If greatness stands for natural strength and power, for organizing genius and capacity for great achievements, then, by all standards, human and divine, Napoleon Bonaparte was great; so great that ordinary measures do not apply.  We seem to be spanning a mountain with a tape.  He represents a combination of intellect and energy which has never been equalled.  He carried human faculty to the farthest point of which we have accurate knowledge.—Lord Rosebery.



Wagner.  The Union of Poetry and Music
No art but music could have given artistic shape to religion, for it alone can catch up and reflect the glance into the soul.  Genuine music never moves farther away from poetry than the rose can be carried from its fragrance.  As soon as music desires complete independence, it loses the vital spark.  May the muses save us from a mere poetry of the ear.—Herder.



Einstein and the Theory of Relativity
In working through Einstein's Theory we feel that the inner secrets of the universe are laid bare.  It is a theory, difficult but not impossible, to visualize, provided we are able to divest ourselves of preconceived and earthbound habits of thought.  Its greatest contribution to knowledge is the surprising demonstration that matter under transcendent velocities acts in an extraordinary manner, and that energy is identical with mass.  It is a new and revolutionary conception of the universe and the time-space element which contains it.





Comments and Opinions

National Geographic Society, Washington, D. C.
On behalf of the members of the National Geographic Society I extend our very cordial thanks and appreciation for the exceedingly interesting and instructive lectures you gave the Society.  Comments on every hand have been most flattering to you.—Gilbert H.  Grosvenor, Director.



National Press Club, Washington, D. C.

There are few men on the platform today who so happily combine apparently inexhaustible funds of information, intimate knowledge of history and science, and profound philosophy.  Baumgardt is a remarkable man whose mission is to compel men to think.—
Washington Star.



University Club, Washington, D. C.
We have had addresses by the best speakers in private and official life in Washington, as well as by the best that comes to the nation's capital from all parts of the world, but we have never had anything that excels your lecture last night on Crucified Russia.  Your excursions into the purposes and meanings of history, science and art, your psychological analysis and power of thought and statement, place you as a lecturer in a class by yourself.—C. N. Bennett, Chairman.



The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences
We shall not cease to be thankful to Mr. George Foster Peabody for bringing your admirable lectures to the attention of the Institute.  Your first course has been attended by increasing audiences and at your last two lectures more than a hundred were unable to gain admission.  Your subject matter is admirable and your illustrations, drawn from the most recent photographic work of the leading astronomical observations on the one hand, and from the results of your own travels in the most picturesque parts of the world, on the other, are in the nature of a revelation.  We trust that you will become a member of our permanent staff of lecturers.—Franklin W. Hooper, Director.



Boston, Mass., The Boston Transcript
Baumgardt has been termed 'different,' and he certainly is, for, instead of simply labering his beautiful pictures, he gives most valuable data and information.  His lectures have proved of unusual interest.  In last night's lecture on 'Athens' at Tremont Temple, he seemed fairly to reve' in his subject.



Washington, D. C., The Washington Times
The genius of Baumgardt was seen at its best last night when he closed his lecture course with 'The Latest from the Heavens.'  The genesis of suns and worlds was illustrated with celestial photographs that were miracles of science and were wonderfully told by this remarkable man, who has proved to Washington audiences that he stands without a peer in his chosen field.



Washington, D. C., The Washington Herald

In conveying to his audiences the inspiration he himself has found in the study of the heavens and the amazing triumphs of human science, Mr. Baumgardt has achieved something more than success; he has made of his lecture an actual work of art.  He so cunningly marshals facts and plays so skillfully on the minds and sentiments of his hearers, that the effect is almost stunning.  It seems as if he had left no room for improvement.—
The Herald.



Washington, D. C., Star
It would seem a difficult task to create a new impression in the lecture field, yet this is precisely what Mr. Baumgardt has done by adding to the elements of instruction and entertainment the charm of poetic interpretation.  His enthusiasm is contagious, his personality peculiarly attractive, and his delivery modulated to a nicety, which shows him to be the possessor of histrionic abilities.  He is a man of the rarest intel lectual attainments.



The League for Political Education, New York City
Mr. B. R. Baumgardt, as a result of lecturing once before the League for Political Education, was engaged for three lectures last season.  These were so successful that the engagement was extended to two additional lectures, and next season seven lectures by him are to be included in our program.  This is practical testimony as to the value of his work as we have found it.  Mr. Baumgardt is thoroughly equipped as a scholar.  He has the rare gift of imaginative and magnetic appeal, so that he wins and holds the attention of an audience with remarkable success.  I regard him as one of the most uesful and desirable lecturers now available.—Robert Erskine Ely.



American University Extension Society, Philadelphia
There are two or three lecturers without whom our season would not be a success.  Mr. Baumgardt is one.  His scholarship, discrimination and magnetic appeal have a strong hold on our people.  He has given nearly fifty lectures for our society.—William K. Huff, Secretary.



Columbia University, Inst. of Arts and Sciences, N. Y.
I need hardly assure you that your lectures were very acceptable and that our members were unanimous in expresing hearty appreciation.  Milton J. Davies.



Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts
Masters and students alike were enthusiastic about your lecture on the stars.  I have never seen more beautiful slides.  The instruction that you give is presented in such a way as to appeal strongly to the interest of the boys.  I congratulate you upon your success and hope to see you at Groton again.—Endicott Peabody.



St. Paul's School, Concord, N. H.
A boys school is a difficult audience and boys are keen critics.  One hears at this school unqualified commendation of your lectures.  It is a pleasure to recommend them for use in schools.—Samuel S. Drury, Headmaster.



American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Scenectady, N. Y.
Mr. Baumgardt's lecture was one of the best I have ever heard.  He is a well-trained speaker and presents his subject in a very pleasing way.  He is backed by the very latest information.—E. F. F. Creighton, Chairman.



From Prof. E. E. Barnard, of the Yerkes Observatory
I was greatly interested in Mr. Baumgardt's lecture on 'The Frontiers of the Universe', and was very much pleased to see the splendid appreciation shown by the large audience in Milwaukee.  I think I have never seen more exquisitely colored lantern slides than those he showed in the terrestrial prologue.  All the astronomical slides were of the best and latest.



The Bennett School, Millbrook, N. Y.
It is rarely that the informing and imaginative qualities of a lecturer are equally great; but Mr. Baumgardt unites in his valuable addresses a comprehesive knowledge, the power to make the fact more wonderful than fiction, and the happy knack of relating what he says in the most tonic fashion to the interests and needs of school life.  He flung us with a new zest upon study.—Mary F. Bennett.



The Graphic
B. R. Baumgardt has beaten all records on the lecture platform.  In thirty-nine days he has delivered thirty-two illustrated lectures on Art, Travel, Science and History.  His success has been phenomenal and his audiences have grown till the fifteen hundred mark has been reached.  His last lecture will be 'The Trend of Modern Thought.'



Congressional Information Bureau, Washington, D. C.
Your excussions into the meaning and purposes of history, science and art; your psychological analysis and power of thought and statement, place you as a lecturer in a class by yourself.—Claude N. Bennett, President.



White Lecture Course, Lawrence, Mass.
Mr. Baumgardt's lecture was simply stupendous and his illustrations among the most amazing things I have ever seen.  He delighted a very large audience.—Irving W. Sargent, Trustee.