Ernest Wray Oneal

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Ernest Wray Oneal
Management
Slayton Lyceum Bureau
Steinway Hall, Chicago




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Personality Is the Thing
It is the salt without whose savor the greatest talent is insipid.  Personality marks the difference between genius and talent.  Even the singer must have personality.  His method may be the perfection required by the world's mæstros; his tones may have exquisite resonance, and his phrasing may meet all demands of expression.  But if this singer have not a strong personality, the great and impartial public will pronounce his efforts classical music.  That means oblivion.  On the other hand, Ole Bull was more or less censured by the critics.  What of that?  Perhaps he did violate some rules of technic.  The people came by thousands to hear that violin cry the sorrows and laugh the joys of a great soul.  So it is with every artist whose success depends on public favor, whether he be speaker, reciter, actor, singer, author or even painter.  Especially does this fact apply to the lecturer.  The wise committeeman is ever looking for the man of strong personality who invariably makes good in spite of faults.  His address may be little more than a compilation of statistics, but it, or rather the man, gets applause.  Then again, how often the speaker of scholarly attainments, wide experience and elocutionary skill, unspeakably bores an audience.  He OUGHT to be a hit, but he IS a frost.  Many are perplexed to explain the phenomenon.  The trouble lies in an ordinary personality.

ERNEST WRAY ONEAL has this strength of personality in a marked degree.  His remarkable receptions by audiences everywhere and invariably prove the fact.  He has never before employed an agent or bureau, never sought an engagement, and yet, through voluntary applications, has averaged twenty-five pay-lecture dates annually for the last five years.  He is unqualifiedly endorsed by The Slayton Lyceum Bureau

Lecture Titles:

Popular Fallacies
Macbeth, or Seers of Visions
Lincoln, The Man of The People
Four American Centuries Byron, a Tragedy in Character
Chatterton, Child of Genius & Misfortune
Basic Principles of Brotherhood




THEY RESPECT HIM AT HOME
Let the home voices greet him.—Idyls of the King.


Aurora's most powerful platform speaker.  Mr. Oneal is a student and a deep thinker, a forcible and effective speaker.  His address of Monday evening ranks high among the eulogies given all over the nation yesterday upon Old Abe.  Many great lecturers have failed to interest Aurora audiences.  But Aurora's orator and lecturer touched the hearts of every one in his large audience last night.—
Aurora (Ill.) Beacon.


He has an immense fund of oratory, a well modulated voice, under perfect control, with a pleasing delivery and good platform appearance.  He is a man of wide reading, a deep thinker and has a retentive memory.—
Aurora (Ill.) Daily News.


In Mr. Oneal, Aurora has one of the most brilliant speakers that ever graced a lecture platform.  His discourse of an hour was the precipitation from years of reading and thought, remarkable for its intensity.  When fairly launched upon his favorite theme he is a thunder storm, with a torch-light procession and pyrotechnic display thrown in.  Never did a man come into Aurora and in so short a time take such a high position in the affections of the people.—
Aurora (Ill) Daily Express.



HOW AUDIENCES RECEIVE HIM
When he speaks, mute wonder lurketh in men's ears To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.—Coriolanus


It was one of the best lectures it has been the privilege of Decatur people to hear.—
Decatur (Ill.) Republican.


It is safe to say that such eloquence and diction, combined with a powerful voice and distinct articulation were never before heard in Monticello, and rarely anywhere.—
Monticello (Ill.) Bulletin.


He came, we listened, and he conquered.—
Erie (Ill.) Republican.


Ernest Wray Oneal was a surprise to everybody.  He certainly delivered one of the best lectures listened to in Prophetstown for a very long time.  His style is different from McIntyre's but many seemed as well pleased with Oneal as with Our Robert.—
Prophetstown (Ill.) Echo.


His portrayal was graphic and true to life.  Attention was held to the very close of his lecture.  The young people are to be congratulated on securing this able man and allowing the public an opportunity of hearing him on so interesting a subject.—
Rockford (Ill.) Register-Gazette.


It was a masterly address, eloquent and earnest, plain and practical.  A large audience gave the attention of breathless interest to the end.  It was the finest lecture given in this city for many years.—
Plattsmouth (Neb.) Democrat.


Eloquent, practical and humorous, his address held the vast audience spellbound.  Many have said no finer lecture was ever given in Yorkville.—
Kendall County (Ill.) Record.


Mr. Oneal handled his subject with the greatest ease, the large audience paying him the closest attention.—
Fremont (Neb.) Tribune.



PERSONALITY OF THE MAN
Who takes it by sovereignty of nature.—Henry V.


Ernest Wray Oneal is a natural born orator.  I have heard a great many speakers.  I hear one about once in ten years that has the gist of the matter in him.  Oneal is one of these.  He has the spark of divine fire.—
Frank Crane.


A speaker who is attracting widespread attention.  He is a most thorough master of the English language, a bright thinker and a man of profound ideas.  He was given the closest attention Friday evening and all speak in the highest terms of him.—
Sterling (Ill.) Standard.


A synopsis will give little idea of the lofty flights of eloquence and rhetoric with which the thought was clothed.—
Aurora (Ill.) Daily Express.




Ernest Wray Oneal
A logical thinker, an eloquent and forcible speaker.  He portrays his thought with an ease and grace peculiarly his own.  He is not only pleasing, but instructive to a high degree.—W. H. Clemmons, President Fremont, (Neb.) Normal School.

A lecturer of rare ability.  He electrifies an audience and carries it spellbound throughout the entire discourse.  He is a fine scholar and his argument is to the point.  He is one of the best platform speakers we have had.—J. B. Dille, President Dixon (Ill.) College.


A happy faculty of immediately creating interest, which he holds throughout his lecture without apparent effort.  At times he is eloquent, but in a modest way, as he does not strain for a moment in rhetorical flight.  He does not hold his audience through oratorical fineness, but through the virile life of his story.  The description thrilled the hearts of his audience as the bugle strikes a sympathetic chord in the soldier's breast.—
Sterling (Ill.) Gazette.


Ernest Wray Oneal is one of the most brilliant orators that the people of Ogle county have had the pleasure of hearing for some time.  His address on The Basic Principles of Brotherhood contained many excellent thoughts and merited the liberal applause given it.  He is a fluent talker, a gifted elocutionist, and drew many beautiful word pictures with a sublimeness that at times reached the poetical.—
Oregon (Ill.) Reporter.


Most eloquent and effective!—
Omaha (Neb.) Bee.


Such a flow of eloquence abounding in gems of thought we have seldom heard.—
Pecatonica (Ill.)


He is an eloquent talker, a deep thinker, a close reasoner and a profound logician.—
Ashton (Ill.) Gazette.



HIS STYLE OF ORATORY
Now mark him, he begins to speak.—Julius Cosar.


Mr. Oneal paints character as vividly and skillfully as Dr. McIntyre describes natural scenery.  Perhaps most of his hearers had little knowledge of Chatterton when he began to speak, but they went away feeling the deepest interest in a rare genius.—
Sterling (Ill.) Standard.


The lecture (delivered at the Baptist Preachers' Meeting, Chicago) was a striking piece of wora painting delivered with much elocutionary art.  The conference was interested in the truths presented and especially by the picturesque rhetoric and delivery of the lecturer.—
The Baptist Standard.


This lecture was a gem of eloquence.  It bristled with jewels of original thought.  It was a rhetorical and poetical wonder chained down to the tangible by the logic of history and reason—not based on the speculative.  It abounded in meaty epigrams, flights of eloquence, and logic that was truly intense.  He is a veritable son of thunder.—
Shelbyville (Ill.) Democrat.


The speaker has a happy faculty of combining beautiful figure after figure into a perfect climax, which cannot fail to delight the most cultured audience, while it is not less interesting to those less educated.  Orators familiar throughout the land have preceded him, but never before in Lee county has been heard an orator into whom has been breathed such a spirit of eloquence.  The address, rapid and interesting, was all too short.—
Dixon (Ill.) Star.


Vividly did Rev. Oneal present the story till the scenes and actors were seemingly before the audience.  His great thoughts, his flghts of eloquence, his splendid oratorical ability captivated his auditors and held them spellbound.—
Charleston (Ill.) Courier.



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