The southern orator and humorous lecturer: Col. H. W. J. Ham

              99


The Southern Orator
and Humorous Lecturer 



Figure


SUBJECTS:




Old Times in Dixie


The Snollygoster in Politics


COL. H. W. J. HAM



ASSOCIATE MEMBER AMERICAN LYCEUM UNION 
S.B. Hershey Pres't & Gen'l Mgr.
 ROCHESTER, N.Y.




DIRECTION 
CENTRAL LYCEUM BUREAU
 No. 50 Columbia Building, 
COLUMBUS
, O. SPILLMAN RIGGS, 
Manager
.






West Newton (Pa.) Sun


His lecture was clear and forcible, abounding in telling hits, illustrating by most apt and pertinent stories.  Mr. Ham's ability in telling the stories with which he enforces the points of his lecture, is unsurpassed.  His powers of mimicry are wonderful.


Figure


Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle


In one essential particular Mr. Ham differs from the average lecturer.  He has no set speech which he has committed to memory, and which he delivers 
verbatim et literatim
 with the same gesture in the same place, night after night.  He says he could not do it if he would.




ANNOUNCEMENT



T
HE American Lyceum Union takes especial pleasure in announcing the Northern management of Colonel Ham, the famous Southern orator and humorist.  If unbroken success and continually increasing popularity be the test of merit, then Colonel Ham is entitled to the wide favor which he enjoys, and to rank as one of the foremost lecturers and platform entertainers in this country.  After eleven years of unbroken success on the platform, filling large numbers of return dates in the best courses each season, and with a continually increasing 
clientele
 of admiring friends, Colonel Ham has become so widely recognized as a standard platform attraction that the management only deem it necessary to say that he is with us the present season, which announcement, we are sure, will give our friends as much pleasure to hear as it gives us to make.—
The American Lyceum Union.





A FEW PRESS NOTICES OF HUNDREDS



Whitenright (Tex.) Sun


His command of language makes him one of the finest word painters that ever delighted an audience.  His versatility is wonderful.




Moberly (Mo.) Monitor


Mr. Ham is the peer of any lecturer in pleasing an audience that has ever visited Moberly.  We will not undertake to tell what he said, nor how he said it, both the what and how made them smile, laugh and howl, and cry for more.  It is safe to say that a Moberly audience was never more delightfully entertained than was the large and appreciative crowd that heard Mr. Ham last night.




Cincinnati Enquirer


The audience was kept in almost a constant roar of laughter by Col. H. W. J. Ham, who lectured under the auspices of the Unity Club.




St. Louis Republic


The lecture last evening by Hon. H. W. J. Ham, of Georgia, was strikingly humorous.  At the same time it was an earnest plea for purer and higher Americanism, and excoriation of the pestiferous and pestilential partisans who would subordinate the public good to mere party success, to the end that they may control offices and revel in their emoluments and profits.






Additional Comments of the Press



Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.


Colonel Ham is growing in popularity as a lecturer every year, but the prosperity incident thereto has not robbed him of one whit of the geniality and good fellowship which always characterized him.  He leaves a trail of sunshine wherever he goes and the mocking birds whistle 
Dixie
 when he passes.  He has a warm place in the hearts of Georgia people.




Burlington (Ia.) Press.


If there has been any one feature in the Chautauqua course that has excited general discussion and has met with general and unqualified approval from almost everybody, it was the lecture delivered Saturday evening by Colonel Ham, the famous Southern orator and humorist, under the title of 
The Snollygoster in Politics.
  It was one of the features of the Chautauqua.




St. Louis Republic.


No attempt to outline Colonel Ham's excellent address could do it justice.  It was replete with wholesome truth and healthy moral, and the closing part, in which he paid a grand tribute to the God-fearing and virtuous home, and made a touching plea for the American boy as worthy of the best that could be given to him, was an admirable piece of fervid and patriotic oratory.




Seymour (Ia.) Leader.


Colonel Ham is himself a typical Georgia 
Cracker,
 possessed of all the characteristics of the latter-day Georgian, and a fund of knowledge, wit and humor seldom equalled.  He captured his hearers completely by the first sentence uttered and held them captive throughout his lengthy, but nevertheless interesting and instructive lecture.  His side-splitting stories and excellent bearing and good humor were special features of his magnificent lecture, while the many good points and mighty truths were appropriately sandwiched, and were clothed in the garb of fervid and patriotic oratory.




Bangor (Pa.) News.


When it was announced that Colonel Ham was the equal of Sam Jones or any living humorist, no doubt those who read the statement in 
The Daily News
 took the assertion with grains of allowance, but those who did so were agreeably disappointed.  The Col. won the confidence of his large audience from the start and held their individual attention throughout the entire lecture, which consumed an hour and forty minutes.




Columbus (O.) Dispatch.


From the introductory sentence to the last word, Orator Ham had his audience laughing, howling, cheering and applauding.  He was the lion of the occasion.  His word-picture of the 
Snollygoster in Politics
 met with instant recognition.  When Colonel Ham finished the entire audience arose and gave him three cheers.




Seymour (Ia.) Press.


H. W. J. Ham carried his audience way down in Dixie land, Tuesday evening in his lecture, and so clearly portrayed the characteristics of the Georgia 
Crackers
; so vividly delineated the picturesque scenes of the Southern plantations, and so characteristically described the peculiar individuality of the Uncle Remuses and Aunt Rachels that everyone in the audience could imagine themselves right in the midst of the Southern scenes and partaking with the picturesque old 
colonel
 the soothing draughts of mint julep.  The lecture was instructive, entertaining and enjoyed by all present.






Cincinnati Commercial Gazette.


Mr. Ham is a tall, striking figure, with a smoothly shaven face, dark hair and dark eyed, and of that angularity of figure which generally combines in its make-up sincerity, earnestness and quaint humor.  In his lecture he put down plain truths in such a good, old-fashioned, colloquial way that they became convincing without further effort.






Press and Personal Commendations



Indiana (Pa.) Gazette.


Colonel Ham is a typical Georgia son-of-a-gun who is said to trace his lineage back to Lord Bacon.  He has a well-earned reputation as a fun-maker, yet his bright, keen-edge wit cuts a mighty wide swath right through our human weaknesses and leaves our foibles and follies subjected to a thorough ventilation by sense and truth.




McConnellsville (Pa.) Times.


Behind his fluent words were logic and thought, and with all these flowed the greatest, mirth-bursting humor that was ever heard by the teachers and citizens of this place.  He never made a mistake with words or facial expressions.  The list of stories he had on tap were the very funniest that the human mind could conceive.




Greensburg (La.) Echo.


The lecture at the Johnston Institute, Wednesday night, by Col. H. W. J. Ham, the renowned lecturer and humorist of Gainesville, Ga., is now a thing of the past, the recollections of which will remain as a leaf turned down in the book of remembrance to which we may turn and read whenever dull cares beset our pathway along life's journey.  We are not afraid of being accused of exaggeration by anyone who heard it when we say it was the best thing ever heard in Greensburg.




Augusta Herald.


Ham is coming.  The Merlin of Mirth, whose witchery of words calls up hilarity from the depths of human hearts and administers narcotics to grief, whose incomparable wit is set on a hair trigger, and whose aim is as firm as the foundation of the saints of the Lord, the only original and genuine Ham, of 
Snollygoster
 fame.  Hail to the chief.




Hutchinson (Kas.) Daily Times.


Mr. Ham is easy in manner, self-possessed, with not a shadow of affectation or egotism, and with a magnetism that is attractive and winning.  Before he had spoken five minutes every one in the audience was impressed with the feeling that an old friend was talking to them.  No possible description can do justice to the man or his lecture.  For nearly two hours the audience was in an uproar of wild delight.  His lofty sentiment was like the calm of the deep blue sea.  His side-splitting stories were followed by the concerted mirthfulness of the assembled Minnehahas.  From start to finish he he was every moment irresistible.  Nothing in the way of a lecture was ever more satisfactory to the citizens of Hutchinson.




Chas. J. Bayne, The Poet Lecturer.


The country knows Ham as a humorist.  So he is.  He has a fund of anecdotes which would make the fortune of a man of less ability.  He has an apposite one for every contingency which may arise.  He tells them with a genius peculiarly his own.  He could make a town pump smile and a mountain split its sides.




Denton (Md.) News.


Hon. H. W. J. Ham, of Georgia, lectured in the town hall, on Monday night.  The speaker's reputation had preceded him, and the large audience present to hear him were in no wise disappointed.  They were delighted by the excoriating which the eloquent Southern gentleman gave political hypocrites, and charmed by the lofty patriotism he taught.




St. Joe (Mo.) Daily Herald.


Hon. H. W. J. Ham, of Georgia, was given a very flattering reception at the Y. M. C. A. music hall last night by the large and cultured audience which assembled to hear his famous lecture on 
The Snollygoster in Politics.
  Those present who had from reports of the speaker's success as a humorous lecturer expected a rare treat were not disappointed.  For wit, humor, quaint philosophy, and logical reasoning, Mr. Ham is second to none upon the lecture platform to-day.  His inexhaustible fund of rich stories, with which he illustrates his many good points, can be drawn upon without reserve; they never fail to bring down the house.  The lecturer has a pleasing and commanding stage presence, a rich and resonant voice, and a face full of thought and expression.  There was not a dry spot in the entire lecture, the audience being kept convulsed with laughter much of the time.




Talent, New York.


His versatility is wonderful.  To hear his lecture on 
The Snollygoster in Politics,
 is to be treated to an excoriation of the time-serving politicians and a plea for American Institutions as founded by the fathers, hardly equalled by any man on the American platform.  To listen to his lecture on 
Old Times in Dixie
 is to wander through the sylvan groves with the scent of jasmine and magnolia in your nostrils, hear the songs as the plantation darkeys sang them, sit on the wide veranda of the plantation home and sip mint juleps with the lordly but jolly owner and personally know 
Black Mammy
 and 
Uncle Remus.
  To listen to 
The Case of Adam
 is to laugh and cry with the American boy from cradle and catnip through shirt waist and short pants to mustache and manhood.






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