William L. Stidger: in dramatic, stirring, human-hearted lectures that lift!

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WILLIAM L. STIDGER
in Dramatic, Stirring, Human-Hearted Lectures That Lift!

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World-Vagabond Pulpit Orator Poet — Author Magazine Writer Adventurer




Brother Bill loves 'em—of course he does.  You feel that, in his big human hearted lectures.



A Sky-pilot certainly should love aviation.  Here Rev. Stidger is ready for a 2-mile jaunt into the Heavens.



Brother Bill makes friends with a naked Negrito in the interior Philippines.  He knows how to find the human heart anywhere.



Here Rev. Stidger makes photos and friends in China and the Chinese kiddie is already a pal.




WILLIAM L. STIDGER
FROM PREACHERS TO PRIZE FIGHTERS—HE NUMBERS HIS FRIENDS AND FINDS HIS STORIES

IF you looked upon the full-statured man the Pacific Coast has sent to Detroit you would know forthwith that he was never nurtured under glass.  He has the broad shoulders, the fiber and upstandingness of an out-of-doors man.  There is sunshine in his spirit and sinew; and the strength of the hills is his also.

The foregoing clipped from the editorial column of the Detroit Times recently best introduces Rev. William L. Stidger to the Affiliated Lyceum family.  In three months time this wide-awake young preacher-orator has boosted an evening audience at Saint Mark's Church, Detroit, from two hundred to more than three thousand people.  All Detroit is talking of him today.

In bringing Rev. Stidger into the lecture field for such engagements as his busy ministry will permit, the Affiliated managers present one of the best informed and one of the most eloquent speakers of today.  His lectures drip with human sweat, tears and blood.  He knows the laughter, the tragedy and the hope of life.  He's human!

Out of the richness of unusual and varied experiences, years of globe-trotting and close personal friendship with men in every walk of life, Rev. Stidger speaks—and thrills his hearers.

Frederick Thompson who built the New York Hippodrome was one of his closest friends; Elsie Janis and Ed Wynn of the theatrical world are among his cronies; Edwin Markham, Bruce Barton and Peter Clark Macfarlane know him intimately.  Prize-fighters, convicts, newsboys, ship captains, reporters, poets and children—these are Stidger's buddies.  His ministry reaches way out beyond his church doors.

NOT so many years ago Rev. Stidger was a leader in collegiate affairs at Brown College.  He had formerly attended Allegheny College and following his degree at Brown he took his theological work at Boston University School of Theology.  During his college life he took a prominent part in oratory and newspaper work, was winner of intercollegiate oratorical honors and starred in football and general athletics.  He was a member of the college debating team.

Since graduation he has been football coach, teacher of English and Vice-President of the East Greenwich Academy.  He became pastor of Calvary Methodist Church at San Francisco, where he invented the famous revolving cross which now adorns more than fifty church steeples in America.  From Fricso he took up his duties as pastor of a large Church in San Jose.

Then came the war and Rev. Stidger found himself driving a truck on the front lines, where he had many interesting and thrilling experiences.  Following the war he made a 50,000 mile trip through the Orient and Near East writing human interest stories for the Methodist Centenar and a syndicate of magazines and newspapers.

His literary efforts have appeared frequently in the American Magazine, the Outlook, the Independent, Leslie's Weekly and other publications.  He has written several popular books, Soldiers Silhouettes, published by Chas. Scribners Sons, Star Dust from the Dugouts, Giant Hours With Poet Preachers, and Outdoor Men and Minds, from the Abingdon Press.  He has a new book now on the press of the George H. Doran Company of New York.



DR. LYNN HAROLD HOUGH
Former President of Northwestern University, author, lecturer says: Anybody can tell you where gold in not.  Stidger wastes no time on that.  He tells you where the gold is.  You are glad there is a young fellow in America who thinks the thoughts which glow in Stidger's mind.  You like to think that he speaks for no end of Americans who have the same things in their hearts but do not know how to get them on their tongues.



EDWIN MARKHAM SAYS:
It is good to feel the glow of his spirit and to be stirred by the eloquent and high courage of his faith.



BRUCE BARTON SAYS:
He's a big, two-fisted preacher!



A World Vagabond
Brother Bill, as all the Churches call him—knows Folks!

He went to France—of course he went to France, says Dr. Amos Wells, Editor of the Christian Endeavor World.

Then home—then out again on a 50,000 mile writing trip through the Orient.

He has been a reporter, a tramp, a brick-layer, a janitor, football player, a ten second sprinter, a prize-winning college orator, author of six books, preacher, poet and truck-driver!

He knows Folks!



BISHOP WILLIAM A. QUAYLE SAYS:
Stidger has a seeing eye, a hearing heart, an attent ear, a poet pulse, and a sense of yearning which is in all elect souls.  He loves many things and matters and folks.  He is companionable.  His enthusiasms are wholesome and contagious.



PETER CLARK MACFARLANE:
Saturday Evening Post Writer and War Correspondent says: Bill is a big husky fellow with a big heart!  I believe him to be, without doubt, one of the most stirring public speakers on the American platform.  He melts your heart, he makes you weep, he stirs the highest emotions within you; he is a born-actor; he sends you home better than when you went to hear him.



IRVIN COBB SAYS:
His descriptive powers are such as any professional writer might envy.





A still from a San Francisco movie, The Finger of Justice, filmed a few years ago, in which Rev. Stidger was a leading character.



Rev. Stidger as a truck driver in France.  They called him Angel Face until he licked a company bully for slandering parsons as mollycoddles—then it was Gyp the Blood.



In far off Java.  On the way to the volcanic Bromo—for a peek into the mouth of Hell.



Rev. Stidger chummed around with the Crime Doctor of Korea while on his memorable jaunt in the Orient.





WILLIAM L. STIDGER

HIS LECTURES ARE DRAMATIC INTERPRETATIONS
That man Stidger is not an orator; he is an orator-actor.  I'd rather see him preach a scrmon than hear the so-called average orator.  He acts as well as preaches, said one of his hearers in the city of Detroit.



SUBJECTS THAT HE OFFERS:

SUNSHINE SILHOUETTES
ORIENTAL FLASH-LIGHTS
BULGING BACK THE HORIZON WITH BOOKS
WILD TRIBES OF THE WORLD
BIG FELLERS, MOST OF 'EM!
OUTDOOR MEN AND MINDS
WELL, I'LL BE DERNED!
THE EVERLASTING MERCY
(A Dramatic Book Lecture)



DRAMATIC BOOK LECTURES


Hell Hounds
John Masefield


The Power of a Lie
Bojer


The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne


Les Miserables
Hugo


The Resurrection
Tolstoy


Romola
Elliott





HIS HUMAN-HEARTED LECTURES

They will send a thrill of rapture
Through the frame-work of your heart;
They will warm the inner bein'
'Till the tear drops want to start.



THIS YEAR HIS TWO FEATURE LECTURES ARE:
ORIENTAL FLASH-LIGHTS
Having just returned from a 50,000 mile trip through Japan, Korea, China, the Philippine Islands, French Indc-China, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, the Mallaca Straits, and the Hawaiian Islands, he brings a message that will not only be educational but that will thrill and stir your soul.  You will cross the Seven Seas with him; you will look up at the Southern Cross, you will visit the Wild Men of Borneo; the Head Hunters; you will see the fascinating Malay girl, the beautiful Japanese Geisha, the half-breed of the Philippines; the Dyak, the Igorrote, the Negrito.  You will hear an answer to these questions:

1.
Why is the Japanese hated by all the rest of the Oriental people?
2.
Why is Shantung called 'The Holy Land of China?'
3.
Why are Americans trailed all over Japan by secret service men?
4.
Why do thoughtful men say I saw worse things happening in Korea and Siberia than I saw in Belgium under German rule.
5.
Why was the lecturer himself shadowed for six months by the Japanese policemen?
6.
What is the honest truth about a possible war with Japan; and is the state department at Washington telling the truth about what is happening in the Orient?




SUNSHINE SILHOUETTES
In which we guarantee a hundred laughs; misty eyes; tears from the hardest heart; thrills that will lift you from your seats; a re-a wakening of ideals that will amount to a conversion in your life; and a desire to have him back again the quicker the sooner!  Running from humor to pathos, he will take you, swiftly and surely, upward, onward, Godward.




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AFFILIATED LYCEUM & CHAUTAUQUA ASSOCIATION
INCORPORATED

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Serving the English-Speaking Peoples of the World

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