An hour with Charles Battell Loomis

              An Hour with Charles Battell Loomis

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Humorous Author's Readings
By CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS


Author of Cheerful Americans
Minerva's Manœuvres
Poe's Raven in an Elevator
A Bath in an English Tub
Just Irish
A Holiday Touch
Yankee Enchantments
The Knack of It
A Partnership in Magic
Cheer Up
I've Been Thinking
Just Rhymes
The Four-Masted Cat-Boat
Little Maude and Her Mamma, etc.



THE WHITE ENTERTAINMENT BUREAU
Controlling the Redpath and Slayton Lists, is managing Mr. Loomis's tour of readings for Season 1910–11
K. M. WHITE, Manager   100 Boylston Street, BOSTON, MASS.




CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS
Humorous Author and Reader
CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS is the most lugubrious humorist on the American lecture platform.  Mr. Loomis's appearance of profound sadness is an essential factor in his art.  The melancholy humorist is a favorite figure in fiction.  Mr. Loomis, when he walks out on the platform and hesitatingly opens his book, embodies all that has ever been imagined of the sadness of the professional fun-maker, and his audience irresistibly breaks into laughter.  Mr. Loomis responds with a smile so kindly and so entirely human that he wins his hearers before he opens his lips to address them.

Mr. Loomis has exceedingly amusing things to read — clean, wholesome, original things which send his hearers home full of geniality and contentment.  They have pleased audiences in England, Ireland, and Scotland as well as in most of the cities north, south, east, and west in the United States.

Mr. Loomis writes as he talks, so his reading is conversational, natural and takes a quick hold on his audience.  The very gentleness of his manner is an appeal, and the kindliness which beams from his face mellows his hearers to a mood of appreciation.

There is no humorist to-day, who from the platform reaches so quickly the hearts and the risibles of those before him, and wins their friendship by the mere grace of his manner.  Add to these qualities his trained talent for characterization and mimicry and the result is the very individual work of a reader who, in his line, has no superiors.




Some of Charles Battell Loomis's Books

Cheerful Americans
Seventeen humorous tales, including three automobile stories, by Charles Battell Loomis, with 24 illustrations by Mrs. Shinn, Miss Cory and others. $1.25.


N. Y. Tribune:
—He is unaffectedly funny and entertains us from beginning to end.


Nation:
—The mere name and the very cover are full of hope.  This small volume is a safe one to lend to a grumbler, an invalid, a hypochondriac, or an old lady; more than safe for the normal man.  The book should fulfill a useful mission on rainy days, and on kerosene-stepped evenings in those spots on earth where men and women do congregate.

HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, NEW YORK



Poe's Raven in an Elevator
Being the Third Edition of More Cheerful Americans.  Illustrations by Florence Scoville Shinn and others.  $1.25.


Times Review:
—Good comic tales, well told.  Slices of real life — full of wholesome diversion.


N. Y. Evening Post:
—Many glittering little bits of humor side by side with open attacks upon the follies and foibles of mankind.

HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, NEW YORK



A Bath in an English Tub
Good=humor and good humor go hand in hand in this little book.


Charles Battell Loomis is a graceful, agreeable humorist, who has a world of friends and admirers throughout the country, who will welcome this last production of his pen, which does credit to his ability and charming talent of seeing the bright and humorous side of things.—
Washington, D. C., Tribune.

Price, 75 cents.   Illustrated by Robert Graef

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK



Minerva's Manoeuvres

Is Mr. Loomis' first long story.  It is a sojourn in the country with a number of delightfully ridiculous people including Minerva, their city-bred colored cook.  There are absurdities in the book — quaint, unexpected, joyous absurdities — and there is a spirit of tenderness and of sentiment.  Just the sort of book to read aloud.—
N. Y. Globe.

Price $1.50   Illustrated by F. R. Gruger

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK



Cheer Up
Containing Cunnin' Larrikins and The Poor Was Mad.  Price, $1.00.

JAMES POTT & COMPANY, NEW YORK



I've Been Thinking
Containing The Gusher.  Price, $1.00

JAMES POTT & COMPANY, NEW YORK



Just Rhymes
A book of humorous verse.  Illustrated by Fanny Y. Cory.  Price, $1.00.

R. H. RUSSELL, NEW YORK



A Holiday Touch
Fifteen humorous stories, illustrated by Thomas Fogarty, F. R. Gruger, Peter Newell, Hy Mayer, H. G. Williamson, John Wolcott Adams and Mr. Loomis himself.  Price, $1.25


Mr. Loomis has a light touch, a holiday touch, in fact.—
London Punch.

HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, NEW YORK



The Knack of It
Optimistic Essays
Praised by the press in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.  In these the humor is incidental, the optimism very genuine.  Price, 75 cents.

FLEMING H. REVELL & COMPANY, NEW YORK



Just Irish
A rambling account of a delightful Irish trip taken by Mr. Loomis.  Sympathetic, joyous, humorous.


With an agreeable lightness and humor Mr. Loomis describes his impressions of Ireland and Irish people.  His attitude is sympathetic.  His spirit is always kindly, and quite naturally drew a response in time from a people peculiarly sensitive to the mental attitude of other folk.—
Brooklyn Times.

RICHARD G. BADGER, BOSTON, MASS.



Yankee Enchantments
A book of fairy stories, the scenes of which are laid in New England.  Fascinating alike to children and grown-ups. Humorous, imaginative, grotesque, diverting; what the Scotch call pawky.

Illustrated by Fanny Y. Cory   Price, $1.25

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY, NEW YORK



Little Maude and Her Mamma
A nonsense book for children of all ages.  First printed in the Century Magazine; since added to in pictures and text by Mr. Loomis, who is at his happiest in these ridiculous tales of The Mother of little Maude and little Maude.

Cover design by Peter Newell.   Price, 50 cents


Could anything be more delightfully American than his little story of the tactful young lady and the power of the press?—
Los Angeles Times.

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY, NEW YORK





Press Comments

There was fun from the beginning to the ending of Mr. Loomis' reading, the sketches being selected from his own works.  In all sincerity it may be said that upon the American lyceum platform there is to-day no better humorist than Charles Battell Loomis.—
Galveston News.


Mr. Loomis reads well and, of course, with the full spirit, bringing out in their essential details all the fine points of his exquisitely entertaining and amusing writings.  Mr. Loomis belongs to the quiet school of American humor, appealing to the higher order of mental enjoyment—mirthful rather than laughable—and is consequently thoroughly appreciated by such intelligent and appreciative audiences as greeted him last night.—
Chattanooga Times.


Mr. Loomis, who looks as solemn as he is funny, scowled at the audience in a malignant way and started a roar without saying a word.  It was indescribably funny and put his hearers in a frame of mind so that they would have shouted if he had read the Declaration of Independence instead of the intensely humorous selections from his own books.—
Portland Oregonian.


The audience went there to laugh, and laugh they did, at the gentle jokes, the sharp turns of thought and the subtle, suggestive wit which came from the readings.  The readings were delightful, the humor keen and spicy, such as can come only from those whose dispositions lead them to take a kindly, whimsical view of life, escaping, fortunately, the austerity and bitterness of the hardened cynic.  To say that the audience was appreciative, expresses it but mildly.—
Richmond Times-Despatch.


Mr. Loomis had his auditors in roars before he opened his lips, for he is an actor, whether he knows it or not, and if he takes the stage comedy will be his element.  He read from his own works, and there was no selection that was not keen, sparkling and laugh-provoking from the very core.  His manner is that of the born humorist.  If Loomis can be really serious it must be when he is ill.  He bubbles wit and effervesces humor.—
Sacramento Union.


Mr. Loomis is truly an American humorist.  His mannerisms are quaint and original.  In his Poe's Raven in an Elevator Mr. Loomis elicited continuous laughter from the audience.  Mr. Loomis scored a decided hit, and it was some minutes after the close of the reading before silence reigned.—
Baltimore Herald.


Mr. Loomis is a genuine humorist.—
Waterbury American.


Mr. Loomis' mastery of dialect of all kinds and descriptions is one proof of his versatility.—
Rochester Post-Express.


The two hundred and eighty-eighth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims was celebrated last evening by the New England Society of Brooklyn, at the Academy of Music, with the annual dinner, which was attended by about three hundred men and women.  Distinguished speakers, teeming with erudition and just bubbling over with praise for the Puritans, preceded Mr. Loomis, but the stern facts presented by them melted into partial oblivion under the genial heart-opening sallies of Loomis, who looks, as all humorists should, like a college professor whose specialty is delving into deeper mysteries of life.—
Brooklyn Eagle.


Apart from the delicate humor and delightful satire of his writings, Mr. Loomis is a most polished actor, and a master of dialect with extraordinary facial expression.  Added to all of which there is an atmosphere of refinement around his every word and movement.
The full house rose to him and after every selection he had to bow his acknowledgment repeatedly.—

Oxon Whig (Wallingford, Eng.).


It is impossible to give any limit to the delicious humor of Mr. Loomis' work.—
Boston Budget.


You feel that Mr. Loomis could not help being funny if he tried.—
Chicago Times.


Mr. Loomis is simply irresistible in Irish dialect.—
Seattle Post Intelligencer.


Mr. Loomis has a way with him which is distinctly his own and gives him as clear a path of special humor as that followed by Mark Twain or R. J. Burdette.  His satire is as delightful as it is kindly and his exaggerations are as amusing as they are original.—
Minneapolis Times.


Mr. Loomis has a sense of humor that is refreshing, for he understands it all — the subtle, delicate kind, and that which must be laid on with a heavier brush.  He is thoroughly entertaining.—
Minneapolis Tribune.


Loomis looks like the picture of Melancholy.  He has the American faculty for bringing out the point with distinctness.—
Los Angeles Times.


Bubbling with humor.—
New York Times.


He tells with much humor how he succeeded in performing his ablutions in a shallow bath with one inch of water … and, altogether, he is the type of American to whom the Briton would readily extend the right hand of fellowship, and never think of the tea-chests in Boston Bay and their dire results.—
Dundee (Scotland) Advertiser.