Hervey Smith McCowan: lecturer and author

              Hervey Smith McCowan Lecturer and Author


figure




Subjects:



Kings and Queens,


Crowned and Uncrowned.


Jean Valjean.


A Man Without a Voice.


Jerome Savonarola.


Henry Woodfin Grady.






INTRODUCTION



H
ERVEY SMITH McCOWAN is rapidly coming to the front in popularity as a Lyceum Lecturer.  The two years just past have found him in many of the strongest courses in the West and Northwest, and his reception has been such that he has decided to give most of his time to the Platform for some years to come.  He can attend to his duties as Editor of the 
Moulders of Manhood
 and spare about 100 nights for the Lecture field.  He has placed his entire business with us and we fully expect from the calls already received to enable us to give him a full season's work.  His subjects are both 
Popular
 and 
Literary,
 and he is equally successful in winning the approbation of the crowd and the more select literary clubs.  He is sure to have many calls.  Send in yours promptly to the nearest agency of the




THE CENTRAL LYCEUM BUREAU.





CONDENSATIONS OF COMMENTS



Duluth Herald.


A remarkable evening with a remarkable young man.




Detroit Journal.


Two thousand people gathered at the People's Church last night to hear Mr. McCowan.




St. Paul Pioneer Press.


A young man who in two years has risen to the front rank of orators in the Northwest.




Detroit Evening News.


The sermon in the People's Church was listened to by an unusually large audience and two or three times the people were so moved by the stirring address that they broke over the bonds of church etiquette and applauded vigorously.




Scarlet and Black, Grinnell College, Towa.




Mr. McCowan is truly a remarkable speaker.  The magnetism of his personality and the commanding dignity of his appearance combined with unusual and unexpected dramatic ability give him a powerful influence on the platform.




St. Cloud [Minn.] Journal-Press.


Mr. McCowan's lecture last night was bold, brainy, brilliant and beautiful.




Detroit Free Press.


The large Sunday evening audiences in the People's Church, were wrought up to a high state of suppressed emotion by the characteristic sermons of 
MR. MCCOWAN
, and often burst into applause.




C. N. Hunt, Evangelist and Lecturer.




MR. MCCOWAN
 is a strong dramatic speaker, having a wonderful command of language, versatile in his thought and ready with the right word to express it.  His theme is timely; his word painting charming.




Marshalltown [Iowa] Times-Republican.


Words, words, words, but oh what words!  words on fire with the passion of life.  No man can listen to the last half hour of the lecture, 
A Man Without a Voice,
 and not feel his heart melt and his faith grow and his manhood assert itself.  He arouses all the nobility in a man's nature.





H. C. Benbow, Supt. Schools, Washington.




The lecture on 
A Man Without a Voice
 given in our opera house three weeks ago by 
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
, is without possibility of comparison the greatest lecture ever delivered in this city.  His lofty theme, his majestic bearing, his dramatic genius and his art of delivery stamp him a great orator by nature.  The people are still talking about 
MR. MCCOWAN'S
 wonderful eloquence and are attempting to secure him for another lecture this season.




Grinnell [Iowa] Herald.


In the lecture course, 
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
 appeared last night and although there were several other attractions for the evening, we were surprised by the largest audience that has greeted any speaker.  He held the attention of every person in the house from the first word he spoke till he had finished.  It seems his greatest quality that he has a power of magnetism more intense than any speaker we ever heard; it is inspired probably by his commanding appearance on the platform and his wonderful and fluent use of the English language.




Minna Murray, Editor




MR. MCCOWAN
 is a man gifted with the rarest qualities of heart and head, his ideals are lofty, his conception of manhood pure and elevated, his sense of justice keen and clear, his sympathies broad and tender, and his liberality untainted by prejudice.  He is large in body, soul and intellect and his lectures awaken the soul-voice within men and women and arouse them to a higher appreciation of love at the fireside, honor in business, purity in politics and pride in honest labor.




Prof. F. W. Darling, Chicago Schools.




Thoughts, ideas, irony, facts, philosophy and fancy tumbling over a cataract of words will describe 
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN'S
 remarkable lectures.  It seems to me he has the greatest power of magnetism I ever felt in a public speaker.  He never hesitates but talks right on for two hours at a tremendous rate of speed, and when he does stop you are sorry.




Wm. A. Colledge, Traveler, Lecturer, Scholar.




HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN'S
 lecture on Savonarola is a mosaic in word painting.  The force, gentleness and at times fierceness of the great Florentine reformer's character are depicted in a truly dramatic manner which holds the closest attention of the audience.  Behind the poetical sentences the listener feels the impress of a great personality fitted by nature and scholarship to instruct and inspire.




Rev. F. A. Summer, Little Falls, Minnesota.




HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
 is a powerful, magnetic speaker, having a phenomenal command of language and holds his audience as by magic.  His power as a word painter is marvelous.  His theme is one of rare interest and his graphic and dramatic treatment of it cannot fail to awaken lively thought and interest.




The Unit, Ia. College.




The speaker of last evening achieved a double success when the most critical audience before which a man can stand was forced to recognize the presence of a master orator in conjunction with a master mind.  
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
 is an actor.  In the description of the death of Lorenzo de Medici the audience was taken into the very chamber with Savonarola.




Prof. J. F. Darby, Rock Island, Illinois.




For those who know 
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
, comments are valueless, but for those who do not know him I wish to say that at times he is simply a cyclone that sweeps all before him.  You may not agree with him, you may not believe what he says, but he will often convince you against your training and education and conviction.




St. Cloud [Minn.] Journal-Press.


MR. MCCOWAN'S
 lecture last night was bold, brainy, brilliant and beautiful.




Aurora [Illinois] Daily Beacon.


A good sized audience greeted 
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
 at Clark hall last night, and all were certainly well repaid.  His lecture was one of the good things of the winter.





Peoria [Ill.] Daily Transcript.


HERVEY SMITH McCOWAN has the passion and power of the greatest orators.  His ideas are thunderous and his rhetoric stupendous; he lifts an audience out of itself and entangles the people in the conditions which he describes.  His humor is quaint, unexpected and irresistible.




The Hardin Co. [Iowa] Citizen.


A rare literary treat was given the people of Iowa Falls at the lecture last Friday night.  Hervey Smith McCowan was suffering with a severe cold but nevertheless gave a very eloquent and thoughtful discourse.  His subject was 
Jerome Savonarola.
  In eloquent and beautiful language he depicted Italy and Florence as they were at the time of Savonarola just before the Renaissance.  The discourse was throughout a brilliant and magnificent lecture.







COMMENTS CONCLUDED.



C. H. Maxson in St. Angsar Enterprise.




Jan. 25th, 1900.




The second number in the lecture course was given last Thursday evening by 
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
.  He was greeted by a large audience that had been led to expect something good and they were not disappointed.  
MR. MCCOWAN
 is a young man, but he has studied deeply the problems of life and has learned how to interpret them in the common language of humanity.  
Kings and Queens
 is a great lecture and from the opening sentence to the close,—for more than two hours, the speaker held the closest attention of his audience with a general regret at the conclusion that the lecturer had stopped so soon!  He furnished inspiration to young and old alike.  His language was so simple that the school child could grasp his meaning, his thought was so profound the experienced philosopher was carried into unknown depths.  It was a message alike to the learned and unlearned.  The general impression may be best summed up by one of our most competent critics who remarked next morning, 
I feel six inches bigger and a thousand dollars richer for having heard that lecture last night.
  
We want to hear 
MCCOWAN
 again,
 is the universal expression.  The committee congratulate themselves upon their good fortune in having been able to secure 
MCCOWAN
 for this season.




Rev. Geo. Edmond Soper, St. Paul.




It has been my pleasure to listen to 
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
.  He is a born orator of commanding presence and impressive manner.  In the heat of address, graphic and splendid figures of speech literally tumble over each other in their effort to reach the ears of the people.  He is a word painter of great power.




Times-Herald, Chicago.


He has that tremendous power of rhetoric, which, when wedded to ideas, always fascinates an audience and arouses the voice of the ideal life within the listener.  Wherever he has been heard he is recognized as one of the most promising young men of the country.




St. Louis Republic.


The lectures of 
MR. MCCOWAN
 are different from all others, they are full of the surprise and the unexpected.  While you listen, you think, you reason, you laugh, you cry and for two hours, so absorbed are you in the lecture, that you forget the time and the place and the man himself.  He is a stimulant to any listener.




L. F. Parker, Prof. of History, Iowa College.




In the exceptionally interesting and instructive lecture course in Grinnell last year there were speakers who had won a national reputation.  
HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
, although then on his first lecture tour, stood well up among the best.




The Daily Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.


HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
 delivered an eloquent and powerful lecture on Savonarola last evening in the Congregational church.  It was graphic and strong in its delivery.




W. D. Bailey, Attorney, Duluth.




HERVEY SMITH MCCOWAN
 possesses in the highest degree that magnetic power which lends charm to instruction and revels the spirit of the great orator.  His imagination is brilliant, his picture painting wonderful and he at once wins sympathy from his audience and commands respect for his opinions.





In Sweep, Scope, Passion and Power




He reminds one of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.




A Magnificent Orator and Thinker.—


Omaha Bee.




The Orion [Michigan] Sentinel.


The lecture of Jean Valjean given in the Congregational church was a rare treat indeed.  The lecturer had a rare opportunity to throw out his wonderful oratorical and dramatic powers and he did it.  It was immense throughout.  He is the fastest talker we ever heard.




Minneapolis Tribune.


The lecture given by HERVEY SMITH McCOWAN in the First Baptist Church last evening before the State Christian Endeavor Convention was the best thing in the week's program.  He said some of the best things ever said upon the lecture platform.






Under Exclusive Control of
The Central Lyceum Bureau,
Management:

H. H. RICH, Rochester, N. Y.


S. B. HERSHEY, Cleveland, O.


FRED. PELHAM, Western Department, Chicago, Ill.


A. E. PALMER, So. Western Department, Kansas City, Mo.




Representatives:





New York,


K. M. WHITE, Rochester, N. Y.




New England,


F. W. REW, Springfield, Mass.




Penna., Del., N. J., Maryland and Virginia,


J. S. ARNOLD, Harrisburg, Pa.




Eastern Ohio and West Virginia,


C. M. PARKER, Cleveland, O.




Western Ohio and Indiana,


G. W. HENNEBERGER, Indianapolis, Ind.




Michigan,


CHAS. T. MAINES, Flint, Mich.




Ontario, Canada


C. W. HARTMAN, Toronto, Ont.






CENTRAL BUREAU PRESS, ROCHESTER, N. Y.