Hervey Smith McCowan

              Hervey Smith McCowan


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LECTURE SUBJECTS:



The Victims of the Law


Kings and Queens, Crowned and Uncrowned


Jean Valjean




Under Management Central Lyceum Bureau, Orchestra Bldg., Chicago






WHY MR. McCOWAN CANNOT LEAVE THE LYCEUM PLATFORM



W
HEN Hervey Smith McCowan first began to lecture, he took place among the prominent men of the profession from the start.  His lectures were remarkable for their versatility and power.  They contained poetry and philosophy, epigrams of wisdom, and with which cracked like a whip.  He has always had that strange genius of rhetoric which only public speakers of the first class possess.  He has a gift in description which very few men on the American platform equal, and with it all, his language flows like floodwaters over a dam.




Within two or three years his business became so large that he over-worked and broke down.  He opened an alfalfa ranch in Oklahoma.  After a couple of years he lectured a season, then tired of travel and stayed on his ranch.  Now we have persuaded him to give us this season.  His new lecture 
The Victims of the Law
 is the liveliest kind of a live theme.  
Kings and Queens, Crowned and Uncrowned,
 has secured its place beside the big things of big men, and 
Jean Valjean
 is in itself so interesting that no man could give a dull lecture with it.




He has given his 
Kings and Queens
 lecture three times in the same town.




It has happened a good many times when he has given a lecture, that the audience want it repeated because they believe that one man could not have two lectures equally good.  The people who have heard him insist on having him back.  All of his time will be booked early.  If you want him you would better write early.






SECRETARY LACY
OF THE OSKALOOSA, IOWA, Y. M. C. A.

You have inquired concerning our opinion of Mr. McCowan's lecture given here last year.  It was immense!  We have had Conwell, Dixon, Gunsaulus and Hillis, but there are many here who place McCowan above them all.  The torrent of language, the sweep, the imagery and the power of the man are tremendous.  His eloquence is wonderful.  He aroused our people to the most intense enthusiasm and for two hours held them in the hollow of his hand.




LAWRENCE T. KERSEY

FOR MANY YEARS FIELD REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE CENTRAL, REDPATH AND SLAYTON BUREAUS

I booked Mr. McCowan for his first lecture seven or eight years ago.  I have booked him every year since.  I have seen him in large city courses.  I have seen him in country churches far off the railroad, and among all conditions.  I have had the universal commendation of his theme, his power, his magnetism and his charm, and I know very, very many who think he has not an equal in the lecture field.




F. W. DARLING

COOK COUNTY NORMAL SCHOOL CHICAGO, ILL.

Thoughts, ideas, irony, facts, philosophy and fancy, tumbling over a cataract of words, will describe Mr. McCowan's remarkable lectures.  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.





HIS NEW LECTURE:  
THE VICTIMS OF THE LAW



Among lectures there are so many which deal with essentially the same themes:  Character, Conduct, Love, Happiness, Wealth.  When the committees have examined many subjects they feel like dropping the lectures from their bookings.  But here in 
The Victims of the Law
 Mr. McCowan has one entirely novel.  He takes life as a Game, and Law as the Rules of the Game.  He shows how men break the rules and are caught; how the rules sometimes are unfair and work great injury to innocent people.  He describes the plots of unscrupulous men who use the law to win confidence and swindle the public out of honest money.  It will be long before one will find anything more graphic or sensational than his description of an enterprise in which he was persuaded to invest, and by which the public was swindled out of fifty thousand dollars.  He is now paying this money back to innocent investors out of the income from his lectures.  His lecture is taken from the Commercial Office and the Court Room.  The theme is as vital as the life of living men.  One sees the struggle and the fight.  He feels the blows.  He sees the blood.  He hears the groans of dying men and the shouts of victory and of triumph.  He watches the trial, listens to the sentence and knows the chill of despair when the prison doors clang to.  His stories are as delicious as candied cherries and cracked nuts.  In no other lecture has he had such scope for his peculiar power and eloquence.  This will be one of the most sought after lectures on the platform.  Every city ought to have it and it will save broken hearts and broken fortunes in every town where it is heard.  
It is as pure as water and as good as bread.




MANZ ENGRAYING COMPANY THE HOLLISTER PRESS CHICAGO