Ralph Parlette

              Ralph Parlette



Place, Date of Appearance, etc., to be printed here.






This is your best opportunity to hear the 
Orator of Good Cheer




Lectures



That cheer you
That inspire all
That entertain you
That make you glad you live




The University of Hard Knocks


Pockets and Paradises


Why I Quit Lying


Hurrahs and Heroes


Big Business




Lyceum and Chautauqua Lecturer to all the People




Giving Lectures of Universal Appeal




Wit, Humor, Philosophy, Inspiration




Twenty Years A Platform Favorite






Ralph Parlette Press Sheet

THIS IS A COMBINATION CIRCULAR, PRESS SHEET AND WINDOW HANGER.



Local Newspaper Notices



For the convenience of Publicity Men in preparing Announcements.  Committeemen, pay your newspaper for running notices like these.





Ralph Parlette's Philosophy



Here are many sayings of Ralph Parlette that have been widely quoted.  Get them into your newspapers and get the people interested.  These make a good newspaper feature.





Ralph Parlette Says





These sayings can be run as 
fillers
 anywhere in the paper, with or without date, place, etc., or they can be run together under a panel heading like this:





Ralph Parlette-isms



Parlette is to appear (Place, Date, Etc.)




Ralph Parlette says:  
The sermon was so impressive the other night that the choir paid attention.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The main business of humanity is to see how many years it can get along without God.




Ralph Parlette says:  
It is better to be remembered for our loving deeds than for our bad breath.




Ralph Parlette says:  
If we are sensitive to praise we will be sensitive to blame, and will be injured by both.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When the churches fight, the devil stays neutral.  And furnishes the munitions.




Ralph Parlette says:  
There's no room for tears.  Three-fourths of the earth are already covered with salt water.




Ralph Parlette says:  
All great artists—all people who do great things—are not great workers, they are great players.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When I see a lot of these college graduates who can't spell, I think of a man with a top-hat barefooted.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Seems like as my self-esteem falls my salary rises.  And the less I discover I know, the more people come to hear me lecture.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The reason so many young people go to hell is because there isn't any other inviting place in the community to go.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Success is self-expression.  An imitator never dug a Panama Canal, planted a church, headed 



Ralph Parlette says:  
Nobody can explain life if he believes the grave is the end of it.  Nothing is finished at the grave.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Don't you get lonely in a city?  There's so few people there.  Great crowds, but so few people.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Everybody lives alone in his house of life.  The others never get farther inside than the hallway or parlor.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Whatever happens, there's hope for you so long as you don't sympathize with yourself.  Let the other people do the sympathizing.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The Lyceum and Chautauqua Movement is a system of spiritual irrigation from the overflow of great lives thru co-operative pipe-lines.




Ralph Parlette says:  
We only save ourselves as we save others.  We only find heaven as we help others find heaven.  Nobody ever went to an exclusive heaven, nor to a heaven for 'our set'.




Ralph Parlette says:  
If the people would take the promises of God as faithfully as they take the promises of Uncle Sam, there would be a world housecleaning right away and the millennium would dawn.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Do you know the difference between work and play?  When we play, we get our pay while we do it; when we work we think we get our pay after we do it.  Big Business is the business of turning our work into play.




Ralph Parlette says:  
There is no strength without struggle, no success without sacrifice, no greatness without service, no life without labor.  Just stop your labor, service, sacrifice, struggle—then you're dead.  You are not alive just because you're not buried.




Ralph Parlette says:  
A young college professor told me the other day that 'recent scientific discoveries have utterly disproven the biblical accounts.'  Think of that!  Again!  These young fellows are always making these 'recent discoveries' before they discover the soft spot in their head hasn't bridged over.  The Bible makes their colleges possible and gives them their job.




Ralph Parlette says:  
We work for wealth, not money.  Wealth is what you put in your heart, money what you put in your pocket.  We take money for our work so that we can go on working, just like we eat that we can go on living.  We don't live to eat, we eat to live.  Wealth is the real product of our work; money is just the buy-product.




Ralph Parlette says:  
We don't learn from books, we learn from bumps.  Every bump is a lesson.  If we get the lesson with one bump, we don't get that bump again; we get promoted to the next bump.  But if we are naturally bright or there is something else the matter with us, that same bump must come back and bump us again.  Some of us learn with a few bumps, but most of us are naturally bright and have to be pulverized.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Pride is the upholstering of selfishness.




Ralph Parlette says:  
It is glorious to get old and be glad of it.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The successful liar never overproves his story.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Why don't more great men get their start with steam heat?




Ralph Parlette says:  
How successful are you?  always means how happy are you?




Ralph Parlette says:  
It matters little what people think of you; it matters much what you think of people.




Ralph Parlette says:  
It is just as important to forget an injury as to remember a favor.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The sure way to find out anything we want isn't so much after all as just to get it.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The man who always agrees with you is either a fool or thinks you are.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Let's stay acquainted.  The world's so small we'll need each other before we get out of it.




Ralph Parlette says:  
A good trouble-maker can always find employment.  The raw materials are everywhere.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Only the little man hoards.  The big man has it all.  He owns the earth and the fullness thereof, and the universe hoards for him.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Custom doth make cowards of us all.  You may not fear to go up against guns, but you do fear to go up against a tip.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I know when I am growing—I am so dissatisfied with myself.  I know when I am not growing—I am so satisfied with myself.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The person who lets what he hears go in one ear and out the other often hasn't anything between ears to stop it.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When a family grows up with the idea that the business of life is to outshine their neighbors, they grow up all out-shine and no in-shine.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Generally speaking, the less young people train their heads the more they train their heels.  They would rather be well-heeled than well-headed.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Most anybody can be a hero for a few minutes.  But  are scarce.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The main difference between the country and the city is that in the country you are honest until you prove yourself a rascal, while in the city you are a rascal until you prove yourself honest.




Ralph Parlette says:  
All human lives leave a trail of mistakes in their wake.  Growing isn't having birthdays, but learning the lessons of the mistakes—and then forgetting the mistakes!




Ralph Parlette says:  
It matters little what salary you get; it matters much what salary you earn.  Nobody is long underpaid nor overpaid.  We raise or reduce our own salary; the boss doesn't.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When I get a business letter of two lines, I pay attention, for I know the writer has made up his mind and means it.  When I get a business letter of several pages, I know the writer hasn't settled it yet in his own mind.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When I was a baby I reached so far out of my crib for the moon I fell out and bumped my head.  Most of us are babies reaching for moons.  That's why there are so many soreheads.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Poverty is not merely hunger.  The worst poverty feels no hunger.  Poverty is lack of food, clothing, brains, ambition, sense, decency, industry, love, understanding.  Poverty extends from the slum clear up to the mansion.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Don't you know the world needs your smiles and your kind words and your 'good mornings' today more than your millions and your libraries and your foundations tomorrow?  Don't you know what the world needs most is what you have most to give?




Ralph Parlette says:  
Humanity is one great watch in which everybody is a wheel.  Just attending to your own business is only half your job.  You must make the watch run.  A successful wheel requires a successful watch.  Success is never privately owned.




Ralph Parlette says:  
You have to shoot a good many men's eyes out before they can see.  You have to crack their heads before they can think, knock them down before they can stand, break their hearts before they can sing, and bankrupt them before they can be rich.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Whatever we let come into us will come out later on.  If we aspire to nothing but a suit of clothes, a cigaret and mustache, some day we'll be just a suit of clothes, a cigaret and a mustache.  If we aspire to nothing but a bag of dollars, some day we'll be nothing but a juiceless, heartless, metallic bag of dollars.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I don't care to hear about your creeds.  I want to know if your religion is making you happier today than yesterday—making you a better neighbor, making it easier to overcome your meanness, making today your best day.  I don't want to see the label on a tree—show me the fruit.  Then I'll tell you if it's sweet-apples or crab-apples.




Ralph Parlette says:  
We don't have to run after jobs.  We get ready for jobs.  Then they run after us.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The people who are most interested in displaying their physical charms, generally have very few other charms to display.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I try to know the truth about things, and then not get 'fussed' at what anybody says or does.  We are all a bunch of children, and the man who takes himself and what he knows very seriously is the funniest of all.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Speaking of wealth, I have a millionaire appetite that never falters in time of need.  I have a hunger like truth, tho crushed to earth it promptly rises up again.  It never puts off till tomorrow what can be done today!  I'd rather be hungry than handsome.





Parlette's Christmas Message



This Christmas Message by Ralph Parlette has been widely printed and reprinted.  It has been much recited from the platform.  It has been reproduced in the form of a beautiful art card for mailing and framing that can be secured from The Lyceum Magazine, Chicago.




CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR?  Christmas has never come to him who has never discovered that it is better to give than to receive.





BUT WHEN WE DISCOVER



That Giving is Getting—that serving is ruling—that Loving is Being Loved—that Helping is Being Helped—that the Pure in Heart see God today—that our Life gives our Language its power—that we have no Enemies if we Hate Nobody—that Overcoming Temptation is more joyous than yielding to it—that the Kingdom of Heaven is entered by Right Living, not by Right Dying—that there are No Bad People, but some of our Brothers and Sisters have lost the way——




THEN CHRISTMAS COMES TO US ALL THE YEAR EACH DAY BECOMES A MERRIER CHRISTMAS.  Each day brings a clearer vision of the Christ-Child.  Each day grows larger in peace and goodwill to men.  Each day we come nearer to our kingship of the earth and the fulness thereof.  And thus do the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God
!




May Christmas come every day to everyone in the world!





Ralph Parlette says:  
The world has two kinds of heroes—live heroes and dead heroes.  Most of the world's dead heroes ought to be alive, and the world's live heroes ought to be—better understood.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Of course.  I  else.  I have never known anybody that hadn't had more trouble than anybody else.  But life only gets good after we have been killed a few times.




Ralph Parlette says:  
About the funniest thing in this world is a loafer singing, 'Make Me a Worker for Jesus.'  The song of the slacker is, 'I'm Glad Salvation's Free.'  Nobody ever gets any more salvation than he pays for.  And nobody ever paid for it with money.





Rejoice That We Live Today!



FOR we are learning so fast in this blessed, bloody University of Hard Knocks!  America, the sleeping giant, is getting bumped into the consciousness of a larger life.  The walls of our homes and our work are falling, not that invaders may come in, but that our hearts may go out.  Today the world is one family.  We sit down to the frugal feast with England, our schoolboy enemy!—with France, with Russia, with Italy, with Belgium, with China and Japan, with South America.  While the Prodigal Hun learns to hate his husks and think upon his ways!  We are turning from a full stomach to a full heart.  We have moved out of four walls into four continents.





Rejoice That We Live Today!



FOR we are learning that the things worth while are not bought with dollars, but that sacrifice and service are the currency of life.  Struggle, strifes and afflictions are teaching us faith, hope and love.  Duty is becoming privilege.  Boys are becoming men over night, parents are becoming patriots, idlers are becoming industrious.  I has become We.  Ten years ago in England, in France, in Russia, in Germany, they said to me, 
You are an American?  Then you love money.  You live to get rich.
  I hung my head, for I could not deny it.  Today I lift my head and rejoice to be an American.  Today the world knows better.  There never was a time when a dollar was so small and an ideal so great as today in America.  
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
  Better today than the calendar since Adam!





Rejoice That We Live Today!



FOR our fathers longed to see this day.  To Washington it was given to free the colonies.  To Lincoln it was given to free a nation.  To you and me it is given to free a world!  Our privilege is greater than to the men of all history.  And we are all in the one business today, whether we carry a gun, plant a field, manage a home, run a lathe, sit in an office or stand upon a platform—the business of WINNING THE WAR, carrying it thru beyond 
premature peace,
 making the world 
safe for democracy,
 and planting a surer throne for the empire of the Prince of Peace.





Rejoice That We Live Today!



FOR 
I am not come to send peace, but a sword,
 until the power of evil is broken in the individual, the nation and the world.




RALPH PARLETTE.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Christmas should be seen and not heard.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Profanity is a substitute for brains.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I used to pray for my neighbors at church on Sunday and prey on them the rest of the week.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Quit work and go to playing.  Work breaks people down, but play builds people up.  Turn your work into play.  That is Big Business.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I used to press Brother Jones to my bosom when I met him at church on Sunday, but when I had a deal with Brother Jones on Monday I would not press him to my bosom—I would skin Brother Jones out of all he'd stand for.  I belonged to the church militant but not triumphant.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Trust in the Lord—but sell your tickets in advance.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Don't take a dyspeptic too seriously.  He isn't half as bad as he acts.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Getting an education is learning how to turn our work into play.  All play and no work makes Jack a smart boy!




Ralph Parlette says:  
If a boy gets so much happiness playing horse with a broomstick, why shouldn't he get more happiness out of driving a real horse?  If he gets so much happiness building houses out of sticks, why shouldn't he get more happiness building real houses with real tools?  If little girls get so much happiness making mud pies and putting rag doll babies to sleep, why shouldn't grownup girls get more happiness making real pies and putting real babies to sleep?




Ralph Parlette says:  
If getting things would make people happy, wouldn't Harry Thaw be deliriously happy, instead of just delirious!




Ralph Parlette says:  
I would rather a man would trust me enough to tell me his troubles than to loan me his  back.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I'd rather be a roughneck than a stiffneck.  Give me a rough shirt and a kind heart rather than all the silk and snobbery on Broadway.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I am sorry for two kinds of people—youngsters who have no dreams and oldsters who are always 'practical.'  The first haven't waked up and the others have gone to sleep.




Ralph Parlette says:  
We only serve God as we serve man.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The unhappy man is always trying to get things.  The happy man is always trying to be things and give things.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I have been on the platform more than twenty years, and I have spent eleven of them waiting on late trains.




Ralph Parlette says:  
It took me forty-seven years to discover the reason the world is so grouchy towards me is that I am so grouchy towards the world.




Ralph Parlette says:  
And yet with wireless telegraphy and feature films the people aren't any happier than when we used to 'borry fire' and shave with soft soapsuds.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The man who wants to improve the whole world should start with himself.




Ralph Parlette says:  
You get a man's measure quickly by learning what he considers important.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I would rather trust a good woman's intuition than forty smart men's reasoning.




Ralph Parlette says:  
God improves on acquaintance.  Been having trouble with Him?  Get better acquainted.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The man with the most testimonials, generally needs them most.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The three greatest diseases in America are vacations, Coca Cola and the Saturday Evening Post.




Ralph Parlette says:  
A prominent citizen is one who thinks he is an exception to the rules.




Ralph Parlette says:  
It is not enough to be right.  You must be lovingly and generously right.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Good luck doesn't depend upon the bump, but upon the bump-ee!




Ralph Parlette says:  
Most of us die in our twenties—tickled to death with our press notices.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Advice is another of the things it is more blessed to give than to receive, as a general thing.




Ralph Parlette says:  
We can protect ourselves fairly well from our enemies, but heaven deliver us from our fool friends!




Ralph Parlette says:  
The menace of America does not lie in swollen fortunes, but in the shrunken souls of those who inherit the fortunes.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When anybody tells me the world is dishonest, I put my hand on my pocketbook the rest of our visit.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I know exactly how long I shall live—until my job is finished.  A minute longer would be a waste of good oxygen.




Ralph Parlette says:  
If there is one thing some people enjoy more than doing a good, act, it is telling about it afterwards.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Boost!  Boost your inferiors because they need it.  Boost your superiors because you need it




Ralph Parlette says:  
You cannot bury anybody until he consents.  Every the undertaker goes and greases his buggy.  He believes in preparedness.




Ralph Parlette says:  
We study agriculture out of the books, but that doesn't make us an agriculturist.  We must take a hoe and go out and agricult!




Ralph Parlette says:  
This world is but a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected in all around us.  The one who tells me nobody loves him, doesn't love anybody.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Adam owned the earth and the fulness thereof without a dollar in his pocket.  Because he had no pocket!  After he got a pocket, he owned what he could put in his pocket.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Down where I grew up if a man died without life insurance he was a total loss.  But if he died without fire insurance we weren't half so much worried!




Ralph Parlette says:  
There's plenty of seats at the place where you ought to be, but you have to stand up at the place where you oughtn't to be!




Ralph Parlette says:  
You never get an education out of a college; you get the tools.  You get your education in the University of Hard Knocks and write all you know in the Book of Experience.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Life is an active thing earned in service.  The pig in the wallow isn't living—he's vegetating—getting ready for sausage.  That pig is worth more dead than alive—like any other loafer.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The fellow in every community who can't learn from a few bumps that he cannot get something for nothing, is always the one who is 'selected' to receive a thousand per cent.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When anybody comes to me and says, 'Now, I want your advice,' I have learned he doesn't want my advice at all and won't take it.  He wants me to approve a plan he has already made and will be mad if I don't.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When you and I learn to love our work and get as absorbed in it as Edison is, we'll not need any more sleep than Edison needs.  It is the people who get the least out of their waking hours that need the most sleeping hours.




Ralph Parlette says:   
The Lure of the Country must conquer the Lure of the City.  Every town that is losing its boys and girls is bleeding to death.  The town that young people leave is the town that young people ought to leave




Ralph Parlette says:  
Moses was eighty years preparing to do forty years' work.  Jesus was thirty years preparing to do three years' work.  Most of us expect to prepare in four easy lessons by mail, or after the doctor says there is no hope.  You can be a pumpkin in one summer—with the accent on the punk!  You can be a mushroom in one day—with the accent on the mush!




Ralph Parlette says:  
Get bigger; then your troubles get smaller.




Ralph Parlette says:  
You have no enemies if you hate nobody.




Ralph Parlette says:  
A real vacation is never in quitting work, but in finding different work.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The man of the hour is generally the bore of two hours.




Ralph Parlette says:  
If you want to learn how to raise children, ask a spinster or an old bachelor.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I am so glad that God and heaven are bigger than the little knot-hole I look through.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Many a warm-hearted man is just deficient in radiation.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The world respects people who work.  The world suspects people who do not work.




Ralph Parlette says:  
You don't have to die to go to heaven or to hell.  They begin here.  Seems like I have been in both.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The man who thinks a half dollar is very high for a lecture thinks it is dirt cheap for a dirty show.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I'd rather be able to say 
No!
  at the right moment than to be able to make Daniel Webster speeches all the rest of my life.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The fellow who thinks the world is degenerating has been looking into the glass too much.  He should get religion.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Why can't I coax grass to grow in my front lawn where I pray for it and feed it Mellin's Food, when I can't fight it down with a hoe in my back garden where I don't want it?




Ralph Parlette says:  
I used to think I was so smart and bright and witty and clever that people just had to cheer me.  Now I marvel at the patience of the people with a bore.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Why does a father bolt his horse in the barn at night and let his boy prowl?  And why does he chain up his five-cent dog and let his daughter flutter at random?




Ralph Parlette says:  
Study the higher branches, but remember that the higher branches that father breaks off the apple-tree back of the home have more to do with shaping destiny.




Ralph Parlette says:  
If one had to take a pick and shovel and tramp all over the mountains to find salvation, the whole world would be out after it.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Don't worry about the wrinkles in your face.  Rub the wrinkles out of your heart and you rub them off your face or turn them into lines of beauty.




Ralph Parlette says:  
It takes struggle to make strength.  The strongest people live where they have to struggle with both heat and cold.  The weakest live where life is easiest—whether in the tropics or in the tropical mansion on Millionaire Row.




Ralph Parlette says:  
When the preacher gets drunk, he gets two columns on the front page.  When he saves a hundred drunkards he gets two lines on the back page.  The world hunts your meanness with a microscope and your goodness with a telescope.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Children read you; they don't read your diplomas.  You can't fool a child; you can only fool wise people and grown-ups.  Start the children right and save on missionaries later on.  Making the country is better than saving it—and cheaper.




Ralph Parlette says:  
I asked the keeper in an insane asylum why they only had a few guards for the two thousand inmates.  They could get together, overpower the guards and get out.  'But they can't get together.  That's the reason they are here,' said the guard.  Doesn't that remind you of some towns?




Ralph Parlette says:  
Most of us think we would be great if we could just get into a great place.  But we'd be a great joke.  We don't become great by getting a great place any more than a boy becomes a man by putting on his father's boots.  He must grow greater feet before he gets greater boots.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Anybody who says he wants to be a child again merely confesses he has lost his memory.  A child isn't seeing its best days, but its worst days.  I don't want to live it over.  I wouldn't take my chances getting through it again alive.  I used to think heaven must be a place where everybody eats at the 'first table.'  A child can be full of joy and hold a pint.  After awhile it holds a quart.  I hold a gallon now.  I expect to hold a barrel.




Ralph Parlette says:  
They tell me every day that I am overworking and cannot live three months at the present pace.  They've told me that for years, and I continue to fatten.  You can't overwork at the work you love.  You break down at the work that frets you.  I used to be old, but I found my job, and now I am getting positively childish.  I'm as happy over my job as a boy with his new boots.  I hate to quit it and go to bed.  Age isn't birthdays—it's grunts.  I'd rather live three months in the active voice, indicative mood, present tense, masculine gender, singular number—and possessive case!—than to vegetate as long as Methuselah!





COMMITTEEMEN, PLEASE READ THIS FIRST



Greetings to the person or organization working unselfishly to bring better things into the community!




Let us unite to make the coming of Ralph Parlette do great good to the community.  Get him a great audience.  Get him a little audience and he can do a little good; get him a great audience and he can do great good.  Whatever Ralph Parlette's subject, he will bring a clean, religious, entertaining, inspiring message for all your people, young and old.




To get a great audience, you must do two things:




ADVERTISE!
SELL THE TICKETS IN ADVANCE!



So many think that advertising will do it all.  Advertising is mainly to help sell the tickets in advance.  If you advertise and do not sell the tickets in advance, your experience will likely be as sad as 
Jim Bigheart's.
  Don't fail to read about 
Jim
 in the story printed next to this—
This Committeeman Did a Great Job of Advertising.
  This is an actual occurrence, only the names being changed.  It happens nearly every time committees rely upon a great name to attract a crowd.




A show draws its crowd; a lyceum or chautauqua lecture crowd does not make the show appeal, therefore, its crowd must be MADE by selling the tickets in advance.  When you rely upon the people to come and buy tickets after they get there, IT GENERALLY RAINS, or SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS to keep most of them away.




This is written by a person who has had many years of daily lyceum experience with audiences.  It may be worth A HUNDRED DOLLARS TO YOU.




Ralph Parlette is doing a great work in America.  He cannot speak more times a year, because his year is booked full, but he can speak to twice to ten times as many each time, and thus do twice to ten times as much good.  HE WOULD RATHER NOT COME TO YOU if you give him a small audience, for he might use that day somewhere else before a larger audience.





HOW TO ADVERTISE



1.


DISTRIBUTE all the Circulars and hang up this Circular, the Window-Cards and other matter the Bureau sends you.  PRINT the date, place and other information upon all Circulars and Window-Cards—DON'T WRITE IT.  This is always false economy.  The public is intelligent.  Writing dates makes the matter look cheap and amateurish.  The cheapest show prints its dates.  Besides, if you do not patronize your printers, how can you expect them to feel like boosting your cause?


2.


ADVERTISE IN THE HOME PAPERS.  Run paid readers and display ads in the papers.  In this Press-Sheet are samples of both.  Write more to fit your case.  Get some of the Parlette write-up stories in this Press-Sheet into your papers.  Get people in your community who have heard Parlette to write up endorsements for publication.  This is very effective.  Home testimony is powerful.  BUY SPACE of the newspapers.  It is hardly fair just to offer them complimentary tickets.  They can't eat the tickets!  As you buy their space, you make them greater lyceum boosters and get them disposed to print more and more reader stories and lyceum news.  Most committees fail to get their home newspapers sufficiently interested.


3.


GET THE PARLETTE PHILOSOPHY INTO YOUR PAPERS.  In this sheet is a lot of it sent you to run in your papers.  As your people get to reading it they will want to hear Parlette when he comes.  It was Parlette's newspaper readers who originally called


4.


INVENT WAYS TO ADVERTISE.  Use bulletin-boards, chalk the sidewalks, get out dodgers, send around boys bearing banners, get announcements into the hotels.  Make everybody see it a hundred times; once isn't enough.  In many towns, especially in the West, the children of the public schools make a parade headed by band or drums, carrying announcement banners.  Get your ministers to announce Parlette's coming from their pulpits.  Get it announced in schools and in all public meetings.  Have the date printed as far ahead as possible, to keep other events from afterwards selecting that date.





SELLING THE TICKETS



There are many methods of doing this.  But every successful method depends mainly upon the personal appeal, one by one.  Very often the children of the schools can sell the tickets, and many committees offer a prize or free tickets to the children selling the most tickets.




But it is even better for the grown-ups to get out and sell the tickets.  In many of the most successful lyceum and chautauqua towns the influential citizens—the bankers, company heads, leading women, etc.—turn out on certain days to sell tickets.  Sometimes they divide into two sides, the side selling the larger number of tickets being given a banquet by the defeated side.  This creates much amusement.




In the ticket canvass, every section should be systematically visited.  And there should be careful checking up.




Very often ticket-sellers are hired, but this rarely creates the spirit of volunteer work.  Very often the tickets are sold for some benefit cause.  It is right to devote the surplus to some worthy public cause, but it is WRONG to sell the tickets for that purpose alone.  Make the buyer understand he is getting FULL VALUE in the lecture, and DON'T SELL A TICKET to someone who buys it to 
help you out.
  This is not a charity cause.




GET THE YOUNG PEOPLE.  Sell the entire gallery or section of the main hall to school children at a nominal figure, if necessary, and see that they fill it.  Parlette will interest and help them.  GET THE POOR PEOPLE.  If you have people who cannot afford to buy tickets at regular rate, can you not arrange for them at nominal rates or pass them in free?





OTHER ARRANGEMENTS



HAVE COMFORTABLE HALL, well ventilated.  Bad air makes an audience drowsy and unable to get full benefit from platform.  Always have FOOTLIGHTS and as much more light as possible on the speaker's face, which helps to hold attention.  When the audience does not see the speaker's face it does not listen so well.




START ON ADVERTISED TIME.  It is unfair to the prompt ones to steal their time waiting on the tardy ones.  Seat the latecomers in the rear.  A few such experiences will teach them to come earlier.




HAVE MUSIC BEFORE THE LECTURE, when possible.  It is a fine way to start, clearing the atmosphere, giving time for late arrivals to be seated, and giving the event more local interest.  The music can be an orchestra, chorus, vocal or instrumental solos or phonograph records.




CUTS—You can get single-column cuts of Ralph Parlette to run with his advertisements and sayings in the papers, by applying to the Bureau booking him.  CUTS ARE TO BE RETURNED to Bureau or to Parlette when he comes.




THIS CIRCULAR is not only intended for use as a Press-Sheet, but also to hang up for window display, either folded or unfolded.





PRIZE LECTURE-REPORTING CONTEST



For years Ralph Parlette has offered a prize of one of his books for the best story of his lecture written by young people in his audience.  He has great files of prize-winning papers from young people all over the United States, showing how well they hear, understand and remember his lectures.




The Committee can arrange the contest as they see fit, or may turn it over to the schools to manage.  The main plan is to have the young people (1)  Hear the lecture; (2)  Afterwards write an account of it, especially telling in the writer's language what the lecture taught (taking notes during lecture, if desired); (3)  Hand papers to Committee, to Teacher or Judges selected (best that judges do not know who wrote papers); (4)  Send winning paper to Ralph Parlette, 1247 Peoples Gas Building, Chicago, Ill., together with name of writer, and book will be sent to address directed, inscribed with name of winning writer, to place in the school library.




Many schools have oral or written reporting of the lecture as an English exercise, giving grades or credits.




Very often the local newspapers are kind enough to print the prize papers, lending added interest to the contest.




The prize is merely incidental.  The real value is the drill in listening, remembering and retelling, thereby fixing the lecture in mind.  This contest plan has been warmly endorsed by educators everywhere.





READ THE LYCEUM MAGAZINE



This is the Magazine of the Lyceum and Chautauqua Movement, edited by Ralph Parlette, and each number contains much of his philosophy and good cheer, besides valuable information about committee management, and news from the entire field.  It is read by the profession, and is necessary to keep informed.  It is published monthly at $2.00 a year.  THE COMMITTEEMAN'S MANUAL is a booklet of instructions covering every phase of the work, and is given FREE with a magazine subscription, if requested.  Address:  The Lyceum Magazine, 122 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill.






PARLETTE'S LECTURES IN BOOKS



Every time Ralph Parlette lectures, there are those who would like to have the lecture in book form to preserve or to send to friends.  Two of the lectures, 
The University of Hard Knocks
 and 
Big Business,
 are in book form, and others are to be published.  These books already have a national sale.




Committees should arrange with their local book store to place Parlette's books in their windows.  It is good advertising, and there will be call for them.  The books are $1.00 each, postpaid.  Send to The Lyceum Magazine, 122 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill.






Here is the Fate of the Committee That Does Not Sell the Tickets in Advance





HE DID A GREAT
JOB OF ADVERTISING



But He Didn't Sell the Tickets in Advance, Hence He Went Deep in the 
Hole




Little children, gather round me and harken while I tell you the terrible story of the man who did not sell the tickets in advance.




His name was Jim Bigheart and he lived in Homeville, this state.  One day


Sell the tickets in Advance!

 a bright idea came to him.  
I will write to the Uplift Lyceum Bureau and get them to send Hon. William Tellem to lecture in Homeville, because it will do the young people so much good and I will be doing a great missionary work.




And Jim wrote the bureau that he desired to uplift the community with a lecture by Hon. William Tellem.  Whereat the bureau replied that they could send Hon. William Tellem on the 21st for $150, please sign the enclosed contract and return at once.




As Homeville's last census showed 1500 population, Jim got 5000 circulars and 1000 window cards, for he believed in advertising.




The next ten days were busy days for Jim.  He was doing a great thing for Homeville.  He scattered circulars every day and boomed the coming lecture in the papers.  He knew that advertising was the secret of success, for he had read so in the life of P. T. Barnum.  His heart was happy, for he was doing work for his fellow man.




Everybody is Going!




Being unselfish, he induced the Women's Homeville Uplift Club to give the lecture under their auspices, and also induced them to agree to accept the profits.




He got the pulpits to announce the lecture and preach special sermons about everybody's duty to attend.  The editors wrote editorials about the shame of attending only the trashy shows, and that they didn't often get a great man like Hon. William Tellem, and now was their chance to turn out and hear a good thing.




He chalked the sidewalks.  He hired boys to drive thru town shouting the lecture and date.  Great placards hung across the streets.  The city dray-horses wore blankets shouting Hon. William Tellem the 21st.  The country newspapers even took it up, and commented upon the great day in store for Homeville the 21st when the great orator Tellem would speak to the entire population massed to hear him.




The show-windows could hardly show their special bargains in new spring offerings because of the pictures of Tellem.  Over at school each day the teachers were announcing it.  Each paper was full of 
Tellem the 21st.




Jim got up contests on who could make the most words from 
Tellem the 21st.
  It got so that everybody who passed him on the street would say, 
Yes, the 21st.  I'll be there.
  And Jim could hardly sleep, for he feared he would never be able to square himself with the people for getting such a crowd they couldn't all get in.




He thought of hiring a big tent or getting the Billy Sunday tabernacle plans and putting up a vast auditorium for the 21st, for in addition to the 1,500 in Homeville, most of the county would crowd in that night.




Eleven prominent citizens with Jim constituted the welcome committee that met Hon. William Tellem at the train the 21st.  Soon the line of fordcars was whirling the great orator to the seven schools where he was to speak to the children and youth of our land as a final publicity blast for the unparalleled outpouring of the evening in the Grand Opera House.  Then on till supper time Hon. William Tellem and Jim held a progressive reception along Main street, entering each store and leaving a trail of brilliance.




Can you repeat your lecture to an overflow meeting afterwards?
  asked Jim.




How many tickets have you sold in advance?
  asked Hon. William.




Not any,
 replied Jim.  
You see, it wasn't necessary, for everybody is coming.  They have talked of nothing else for days, the papers have been full of it.  The preachers have been preaching it.  And besides the whole town coming, there will be crowds from all the other towns in the county.




Whereat Hon. William Tellem's face clouded.  He had been lecturing a good


The Audience that Night!

 while.  He looked forward to the dismal settlement with Jim after the lecture.  He shook hands with the affectionate welcome committee of prominent citizens, and expressed the hope of again meeting them in heaven.




After the band had played and the poor and needy to whom Jim had given the comps had come in, Hon. William Tellem came forth and lectured to the handful assembled.  He was the only one not surprised.




The Women's Homeville Uplift Club failed to attend.  Each one knew that the crowd would be so great she couldn't get a seat.  The welcome committee of prominent citizens who had met Hon. William at the train attended knowing that they couldn't get into the lecture hall anyhow because of the crowd.  The young people of the public schools that Jim had brought the great orator to inspire and uplift, failed to attend because the seventh episode of Polly Piffle of Pifflefest was on that night at the Amusu.  The preachers grieved to have to attend the monthly ministerial association, but they knew they wouldn't be missed.




The total cash at the door was $6.20.  Jim wrote his check for $143.80 to Hon. William Tellem and told the opera house manager to wait till he could settle with him later.




For weeks Jim went around in a dazed sort of way listening mechanically to the explanations of 1500 people of how unexpected company or the breaking out of measles kept them away.  
And we had so set our heart on going!




Jim Bigheart is the tried and true committeeman at Homeville today.  He never has a deficit and always has a crowded house.  He has learned how to uplift.  He doesn't do it all on the street.  He doesn't listen to anybody's promises to come.




There is only one promise that means business,
 he quietly says to people who tell him they want to assist.  
That is a season ticket bought and paid for now.  That is your only life and accident insurance.  If you don't buy a ticket and pay for it now, you are going to have sickness, cyclones and all sorts of calamities on the lyceum nights to keep you away and make you 'so sorry I couldn't attend.'




And Jim now runs a course, not single numbers.  And he says the Tellem lecture was the finest committee schooling he ever got.  It taught him that the spirit is willing, but everything will block the flesh—unless the tickets are sold in advance.





WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN SENDS PARLETTE'S LECTURES TO SOLDIERS



Hon. William Jennings Bryan was so impressed with the value of the lectures of Ralph Parlette, that he sent a hundred copies of them in book form to the U. S. Army camps.  Ralph Parlette is to give one of these lectures in this city (Place, Date, etc).




Mr. Bryan adds:  
Having had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Ralph Parlette lecture and knowing the interest which he arouses and the pleasure that he gives to his audiences, I am glad to commend his book, 'The University of Hard Knocks,' which is full of simple and practical philosophy.





GET THE CHILDREN TO PARLETTE'S LECTURE



After Ralph Parlette lectured in Canal Winchester, O., Committeeman W. H. Lehman reported:  
The superintendent of the public schools made this statement before the committee:  'Had I known what the lecture would be, I would have bought fifty tickets for members of the high school.'  And the principal of the high school told me today that he would have given ten dollars for the same purpose.  The community never had better educators than these two young men, and I could not conceive of any greater compliment to Ralph Parlette than these remarks.




Parlette is to lecture (place, date, etc.)





PAID HALF A MILLION TO HEAR LECTURE



The American people have paid a half-million dollars to hear one lecture of Ralph Parlette, the lyceum and chautauqua lecturer who has been secured (Date, Place, etc.).  You hear this same lecture for (admission price).





PARLETTE IS COMING



Ralph Parlette, one of America's best known platform humorists and lecturers, has been secured to appear (Place, Date, etc.).  For more than twenty years he has spoken in all parts of America.  Ask the people in every town who have heard Parlette.  They are his best advertisements.





CALLED HIM BACK



Come back to Greenwood and deliver that same lecture.  Not enough of our people heard it.  I want to gather the business men, the clerks, the workers, the young people, and have them hear 'The University of Hard Knocks'.
  Ralph Parlette received this long distance call from J. W. Quinn, wholesale druggist at Greenwood, Miss., the day after he lectured there and had gone on to his next town.




Parlette is to lecture (Place, Date, etc.).  Better hear him now, for it is rarely possible to bring him back on an open date.  He hasn't the open dates, almost every day in the year being filled.  He goes over all the states, and will not be in this section again this year.





Copy for Display Advertisements



Here are some suggestions for Display Ads in your Newspapers and for Handbills.  In addition you will find abundant material in this Press-Sheet to write into your announcements.  Get recommends from home people who have heard Parlette, and print them.  Use big space in your papers.  Get cuts of Parlette from the Bureau booking him with you.





We Want You



Ralph Parlette coming (Place, Date, Etc.)




TO HEAR RALPH PARLETTE'S Humorous and Philosophic Lecture.  Parlette's coming is a BIG EVENT for this community.  More than TWO MILLION PEOPLE have paid to hear him lecture the past twenty years, and today he cannot fill all engagements offered him.  We are fortunate.




We are Your Own Fellow Citizens, selling the tickets and assuming the responsibility in order that this community may hear a Great Lecture.  You will find Parlette's Lecture as ENTERTAINING as a Show, as HELPFUL as a Sermon, have forgotten.  Here is one YOU WILL NEVER FORGET.




Postpone your engagements to hear Parlette.  Take all the family.  Don't let people tell you next day, 
You missed the best thing of your life last night.




THE COMMITTEE.





An Open Letter to You





I
 AM COMING to your town to lecture on .............. evening, ......... in the ........... I want you to attend—not for what I can get out of YOU, but for what you can get out of ME.  I shall not get a cent more or less whether you hear me or not.  The good committeemen of your own town run the Lyceum and Chautauqua, contract to pay me in full, even if they have to go down in their own pockets.




But I want you there!  Every time I lecture I hear people afterward say, 
I do wish every person in the community could have heard it.
  
Oh, I would give anything to have my boys and girls hear that!
  I am getting so tired of hearing that AFTERWARD.  I want to get the word to every person BEFOREHAND.




I want the people who like lectures, and the people who 
don't like lectures.
  I want you folks down town in the evening.  You folks in the barber-shops, you in the pool parlors, in the hotels, in the 
movies.
  I want you folks at home 
too tired to go anywhere.




I want to try to show you that a lecture can be just as entertaining as an entertainment, just as funny as a show, and just as helpful as a sermon.




If you will come and then will come to me and say you don't think you got your money's worth, I shall see that your money is refunded.




RALPH PARLETTE.





PARADOX OF THE
PLATFORM ECLIPSES
THEM ALL



A Remarkable Pen-Picture of Ralph Parlette, the Humorist Philosopher, Who Is to Be Heard Here (Place, Date, Etc.)




(Cut of Parlette furnished if desired.)




Of the thousands of descriptions of Ralph Parlette and his work that have been printed in the newspapers during his long and successful career on the platform, none have told it better than did Editor Gleason A. Dudley of Walthill, Nebraska, in the following:




Ralph Parlette!  Who will unravel the mystery of the man's power or disclose the secret of his genius?  Lacking every grace cultivated by public speakers, this paradox of the platform eclipses them all.  He takes the commonplace fact of daily life, clothes it with homely language, breathes into it his own grotesque personality, and by some alchemy of genius unfolds a great truth of beauty and power.  From the metallurgy of his crude experience he fashions a mirror in which every man discovers his own image.  He makes a new garment from the old cloth, but the fit is perfect and the cloth is clean.




Parlette is a combination of paradoxes.  He is awkward to the point of gracefulness; attractive in his homeliness; naive, yet brimming with wisdom; the intellect and body of a man with the temperament and physiognomy of a boy.  The audience laughs at, sympathizes with, and at length pays homage to his incongruities, and departs under the spell of a magnetism that defies analysis.  It has feasted at a banquet whose delicacies were the wholesome viands of everyday life.




Everyone you meet is still talking of Parlette, yet not one will concretely tell you why.





PARLETTE HELPS A BANKER



Ralph Parlette, who appears here (Place, Date, etc.), not long ago lectured at a western chautauqua.  As the crowd was leaving the tent a banker of the city walked up to the platform manager and asked him if he had a few minutes to spare.  Then the banker and the manager started off together.  They walked three blocks in silence.  Then the banker said:




I have been sour at you.  I have been sour at everyone.  I have been sour at my family.  I'll tell you why.  I have $250,000 at stake in lands around this city.  This drouth makes my chances to keep above board look pretty dark.  It has made me cross and at outs with everybody.  But I have heard Ralph Parlette this afternoon, and I want to say I am a new man.  I shall look at things differently from now on.  Money is not all.  I don't care if I go to financial smash.  I am going to smile and be good to everybody from now on.




A bureau manager wrote Ralph Parlette, who is to appear here (place, date, etc.), when engaging him for a hundred chautauquas:  
I am anxious to have you go over my chautauqua system again, not only for the good you do audiences, but for the good you do the fieldmen you travel with.  I know that you do not half appreciate the extent of your influence.  My agents all swear by you, and talk about you, and remember you.  Your life, your work, your words are a constant inspiration to us all.




A platform manager wrote Parlette after a summer campaign:  
If I had received no more benefit out of my summer with the chautauquas than the inspiration you gave me, I am rich.  I don't think we ever had another speaker who has made such a lasting impression for good.





LECTURES OF NATIONAL FAME



Of 
The University of Hard Knocks,
 by Ralph Parlette, who is to appear here (place, date, etc.), Frank Chapin Bray writes editorially in The Independent, New York:




Lecture-education in some form is admittedly the persistent force in the permanent life of the chautauqua and the lyceum.  Russell H. Conwell of the unique Temple in Philadelphia has delivered his lecture on 'Acres of Diamonds' (the treasure right at hand if one only has the eyes to see it) more than 5,000 times.  Ralph Parlette's 'University of Hard Knocks' (education from life's experiences) has passed the 3,000 mark * * * The maintenance of such a free forum has permanent educational importance in a democracy.  And the touch of an inspiring personality if it can be secured is universally recognized as the vital element in developing the educational impulse.





THE LYCEUM MAGAZINE



The Lyceum Magazine is the magazine of the Lyceum and Chautauqua Movement.  It is read by the Bureaumen, Platformists, Fieldmen, Committeemen, and all others who keep posted about the progress in this rapidly growing field.




Each month The Lyceum Magazine contains articles upon various phases of the work, helpful suggestions to committees upon the management of lyceums and chautauquas, news from the work and the workers, stories, sketches, constructive editorials, and a host of other features, among them a 
Who's Who in the Lyceum
 department containing definite and authoritative information about platform attractions, bureaus, schools and representatives.




The Lyceum Magazine goes over the entire country, and many bureaus consider it so important to the success of their work that they book subscriptions for the magazine while booking courses, writing the subscription into the contract.




Ralph Parlette is the editor of The Lyceum Magazine, and as he travels, speaking daily to audiences, he is able to bring the cheer and the facts from the firing-line.  Each month the magazine contains his messages of good cheer.




The subscription price is $2.00 a year.  Many committees subscribe for The Lyceum Magazine for all the members, paying for it from the treasury.  There is a special club rate.  Committeemen can get a free sample copy by addressing The Lyceum Magazine, 122 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill.





BOB
 BURDETTE PRAISED PARLETTE



Of Ralph Parlette, the Editor-Lecturer who is to appear here (Place, Date, etc.), the late Robert J. Burdette said:  
Parlette's editorials are among the brightest, cleverest, sanest things in American magazine literature.





POPULAR WITH THE SOLDIERS



Ralph Parlette, who is to appear here (Place, Date, etc.), has addressed a great many soldiers in camp, and has done much other speaking for the war work.




The Indianapolis News tells of his unusual reception thus:  
It was one of the best all-around speeches the men of Fort Benjamin Harrison have been privileged to hear.  * * * The men paid him the extraordinary tribute of calling him back for more.





SETS THE PEOPLE TALKING



Parlette, who is to appear here (Place, Date, etc.) always sets the people to talking about his lecture the next day.  
How did you like the lecture?
  
Best thing I ever heard.
  
I didn't know a lecture could be made so interesting!




Many say, 
I have thought that way all my life, but I couldn't say it so well.
  
You get that man back and I'll drive in with my whole family next time.




The citizen is glad his neighbor heard it.  The parent is glad his children heard it.  The children are glad the old folks heard it.  The ministers have new themes for sermons, the editors new subjects for editorials.  A wave of inspiration has swept the entire community.  Getting Parlette is a big investment.





PHILOSOPHERS ARE HUMORISTS



Parlette is a humorist and a philosopher, which is the same thing, writes Alex Miller, the Iowa sage.  No true philosopher ever escaped being a humorist.  Look at Lincoln.  Look at Ben Franklin and Poor Richard's Almanack.  Read Josh Billings.  Which brings me back to Parlette, who has the funniest habit of sitting down part of the time while lecturing.  He sits down, and lounges around his chair and sits on the small of his back and runs on and on and cracks jokes and deals out pathos till the audience laughs and cries.  All underlaid with a sane, healthy philosophy of life.





QUIT WORK!  LEARN HOW TO PLAY!



I am down on work.  I refuse to work.  I beg of you to stop work and learn how to play.  I can play ten hours—twenty hours—a day.  My playground is all the map.  I have exchanged my child rattlebox for a typewriter.  I used to run the bases in 
two old cat
; I now run for trains.  Work breaks people down; play builds people up—learn how to play, that is the Big Business of living.




This is from Ralph Parlette, who has been secured to lecture here (Place, two men.  He lectures almost every day in the year, he travels an average of 50,000 miles a year, 1,000 miles a week, filling his lecture engagement.  The man who can do this and write all day, year after year, and live and radiate the sunshine he preaches, is a man everybody needs to hear.




Ralph Parlette says:  
Don't apologize for your work.  If your work goes on needing apologies, is isn't your work.




Ralph Parlette says:  
The man who says 'Life is just one damn thing after another,' hasn't really lived.  Life is just one better thing after another.






About Ralph Parlette and His Lyceum and Chautauqua Lectures
For the Information of Committees and the Public and for the Use of Newspapers Desiring to Report His Lectures





GET READY to hear one of the most UNIQUE, ENTERTAINING and INSPIRING SPEAKERS on the platform when Ralph Parlette comes.  Whatever his subject, it will appeal to all the people, young and old.  It will be a Sermon, an Entertainment and an Uplift.  It will be the Philosophy of Life in a new dress.




RALPH PARLETTE has been called a Professor, a Poet, a Philosopher, a Humorist and an Orator.  He has been called 
A Master Painter of the Commonplace,
 
A Preacher in a Thousand Pulpits,
 
The Humorist Who Helps Humanity,
 
Prince of Pen and Platform,
 
The Orator of Good Cheer,
 
The Helper to Happiness.





Addresses 125,000 People Annually



RALPH PARLETTE speaks almost every day in the year, giving his winters to the Lyceum and his summers to the Chautauqua.  Almost every Sunday is given to Y. M. C. A. and other religious mass meetings.  Besides, he speaks to schools, colleges, institutes, conventions, clubs, camps, shops, and everywhere that a man with such a message of cheer and helpfulness is needed.




RALPH PARLETTE addresses about 350 audiences a year, thereby reaching about 125,000 people annually.  He has been lecturing continuously since 1896, and today is more in demand than ever.  He has been booked by almost every bureau in all the states.





A Traveling Editor



RALPH PARLETTE is an American newspaperman who wrote stuff that made the people laugh—and think.  They would first laugh a good deal at what he wrote.  Then they wold think a good while.




His readers called him to the platform, where his name has become known wherever the platform is known.  His annual speaking tours take him into every part of the Union.




Perhaps he is the only editor who makes a car-seat his every-day, every-year sanctum.  Nearly all of his writing has for years been done on trains as he travels to fill his lecture engagements.




He is editor of The Lyceum Magazine, the magazine of the Lyceum and Chautauqua Movement, its publishing office in Chicago, but its editorial office in a moving train almost anywhere in the U. S. And the magazine continues to thrive with one page written in Maine, and perhaps the next in Georgia.





His Lectures in Books



RALPH PARLETTE'S lectures have grown into books.  Almost every time he speaks the inquiries come, 
Is that lecture in book form?




To meet this demand, 
The University of Hard Knocks
 was first issued in book form.  This lecture has already been delivered 3,000 times and the public has paid about a half million dollars to hear it.  Four editions of the book have been issued to date.




Then 
Big Business
 was published in similar form, meeting the same welcome.  Other lectures are now being prepared for publication.  In each book the overflow of many deliveries of the lecture has been gathered.




Further information about the books in special article below.





Parlette in Business



Who's Who in America,
 the standard reference book of its kind, tells something of Parlette's activities.  He preaches that happiness is found in congenial work, and he demonstrates it.




He is a member of the publishing corporation, the Parlette-Padget Company, 122 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago.




Also of the Padget, Parlette & Padget real estate and loan company of Chicago, with offices in Chicago and Palmyra, Ill.




Also of the publishing firm, Parlette & Snyder, Ada, Ohio.





A Family of Speakers



RALPH PARLETTE comes of a family of platform speakers.  Both his father and mother were speakers; his father, John Parlette, was a minister many years in Ohio, and treasurer of the Central Ohio M. E. Conference.  His sister, Grace Parlette, is a widely known chautauqua speaker and child specialist.





Has Had to Struggle



Of course, I have had more trouble than anybody else—everybody has more trouble than anybody else,
 says Ralph Parlette.  
I have done about everything from playing in a circus band to superintending a Sunday school.  And I didn't realize at the time that I was getting all kinds where they live, because I have lived there.




I have worked as hired man on the farm and trained the orphan calf to drink from a copper kettle.  I have worked on the section and pumped the hand-car.  I have taught school, run presses, set type and traded advertising for groceries.




I think the proudest moment of my life up to that time was to go back to the old school building in Ohio, where I used to be janitor, and give the commencement address.




I am so grateful for the necessity that compelled me to work and learn that strength only comes from struggle.





His Lecture Subjects



Partial outlines of some of Ralph Parlette's best known lectures are published in this circular.  Other lectures are available.  All are fit for the pulpit.  Ralph Parlette does not repeat a lecture unless requested.  Very often the people want the lecture repeated.





UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS
—HOW TO KNOW



We Must Learn by Our Bumps,
 Says Parlette—Here's a Lecture Delivered 3,000 Times, That People Have Paid Half a Million Dollars to Hear and Cheer




The greatest school is The University of Hard Knocks,
 says Ralph Parlette, the nationally known lyceum and chautauqua lecturer and editor of The Lyceum Magazine, Chicago.  
The books are bumps.  Every bump is a lesson.  If we learn the lesson with one bump, we do not get that bump any more—we get promoted to the next bump.  But if we are naturally bright, or there is something else the matter with us, so that we don't get the lesson with one bump, then that same bump must come back and bump us again.  Some of us learn with a few bumps, but most of us are naturally bright and have to be pulverized!




This is the snappy way Parlette tells about the School of Experience.  All over the land this lecture has been heard having been delivered 3,000 times since 1904, and it is estimated that the public has paid about a half a million dollars to hear this one lecture.  In book form it has already developed a national demand.





Needless and Needful Knocks



We get two kinds of bumps—bumps that we need and bumps that we do not need—bumps that we bump into and bumps that bump into us!  There is a College of Needless Knocks and a College of Needful Knocks.  The college colors are black and blue and the college yell is 
Ouch!




Parlette says the Needless Knocks are like the bump he got when after his mother had forbidden him to touch the coffee-pot, he grabbed it and 
there were days after that when I was upholstered.
  The Needful Knocks are the kind that were necessary to bump the tree into the beautiful, valuable pianocase on the stage.  They pound the raw material into the finished product.  The disappointments and heartaches we get are Needful Knocks to teach us life's greatest lessons.




The great war bumps have bumped us out of four walls into four continents, have bumped us into greater living.





Shake the Barrel!



Parlette uses a little glass jar half-filled with rice and walnuts, to show how the little ones go down and the big ones go up as he shakes it.  And the barrel of life shakes us all, and all people go where their size takes them.  If we get smaller, we 
rattle
 and shake down; if we grow greater, we shake up.  All people must learn to serve and grow greater in order to go higher.  Parlette draws a hundred lessons from the little jar—helping people up, getting promoted, the folly of parents trying to 
buy
 it for their children.  
You can't get something for nothing!
  And he often confesses his thirty-four years of trying to 
grasp a fortune now,
 from the time he got caught on the shell-game at the fair to his ventures in salted gold mines and bucketshops.





Go On South!



No one can ever forget Parlette's little streannet that struggles out from Lake Itasca and then follows its call, 
always going on south, always growing greater,
 overcoming its obstacles and thus developing its power, purifying itself as it flows, until 1,500 miles to the south the railroad train must pile up in a ferry-boat to cross this lordly 
Father of Waters.
 
Go on south!
  he shouts at young and old.  Never be satisfied, but go on south to greater life.  Today is the best day of our lives, but tomorrow will be greater farther south.




Every time we stop going south and say, 'I've seen my best days,' the undertaker goes and greases his buggy.  He believes in preparedness.
  
Childhood's days the happiest?  Not a bit of it!  The man who wants to be a child again is confessing he has lost his memory.
  And Parlette tells of 
Elder Berry
 and the 
quart'ly meeting
 dinner where he had to wait to the 
second table
 and after 
Elder Berry
 had taken 
even the neck of the chicken,
 he would tell the hungry waiting boy, 
You're seeing your best days right now as a child.
  
The dear old liar!  I was seeing my worst days.




Thru chapter after chapter of real human experience Parlette leads his hearers, and often closes with a wonderful description of his climb up Mount Lowe in California one day when he got above the clouds and rain of the valley into the sunshine, and later stood looking down upon the night in the sunshine of the day.  So in life we struggle up above the clouds into the sunshine and when the night comes we find the eternal day, 
God's commencement day,
 on the mountain-top!





BIG BUSINESS

HOW TO SUCCEED



It's the business of Abolishing Work and Turning This World Into a Playground,
 Says Parlette—
Learn to Turn Work Into Play, Then We Find Real Happiness




Quit work and go to playing,
 says Ralph Parlette, the nationally known lyceum and chautauqua lecturer and editor of The Lyceum Magazine, Chicago, in his lecture on 
Big Business.
 
Work breaks people down, but play builds people up.




Do you see those children playing?  They are working so hard, but it is play—working at driving horses, running trains and building houses.  See those little girls working at making mud pies and putting rag dolls to sleep.  See those men over there working?  The children are so happy playing, the men not very happy working.  The children are getting their pay while they work, the men think they get their pay after they work.  That is the difference between play and work—when and how we are paid.




If a little boy gets so much fun with a play horse, why should he not get more fun when grown up with a real horse?  If a little girl gets so much fun making mud pies and putting rag dollies to sleep, why should she not get more fun when grown up making real pies and putting real babies to sleep?





Success Is Finding Happiness



Big Business
 is another Parlette lecture that grew into a book that is selling today neck-and-neck with his famous 
University of Hard Knocks.
 
Big Business,
 says he, 
is the business of being happy.  It is the business of turning work into play.  It is the business of being what we are created to be.  It is the business of getting our happiness now in our work and not tomorrow for our work.  It is the business of getting our happiness inside of us and not outside of us.




We are all seeking happiness and there are only two places in which to seek happiness—outside of us (that is work) and inside of us (that is play).  We put in most of our lives trying to get things, but they do not get us happiness.  The big house gets as tiresome as the little house—more so, for there is more of it to get tiresome!





Find Your Thimble!



Learning to play in life is like playing 
Find the Thimble.
 When we go the 
cold
 way, we are a 
frost,
 but when we go the 
warmer
 way, we find our thimbles—find our natural work and develop our natural talents.  Then we are finding our playground, and finding our happiness inside of us.  Thus we become artists.  Great artists are not great workers, they are great players.  Whatever we want to do—sing, speak, study, paint, act, invent, design, farm, merchandise, housekeep—that is our call to do it.  That is 
finding our thimble.
  If we cannot market our product so as to make our living at our 
thimble jobs,
 we will have to get a 
meal-ticket.
  We will have to work at something else to support ourselves while we use our spare time at our 
thimble jobs.
  The unhappy misfit in life is the one who has not 
found his thimble.
  Everybody can happy—being what we are planned to be.




Parlette tells a sad story of the old hen that hatched out some ducks that thought they were chickens until they got to the water and 
found their thimble.
  And the mother hen acted as unreasonable as some parents!





Let Your Light Shine!



Parlette shows a flash-light as the picture of his lecture.  It isn't what is outside of the flashlight, but what is inside coming out.  And if any of us are unhappy, it is because we are trying to get gold bands around the flashlight of our life instead of trying to let more of the batteries of our talents shine forth.  Go up and down the street and see the little business men who think they are in business just to get rich, when they aren't in business at all—they are committing the daily crime of robbing themselves of happiness and turning themselves into embalmed cash-registers.  But go find the Big Businessmen—the men who find their stores, shops and offices just playgrounds—and they get joy out of their work like the artist gets joy out of his picture.  And they find the whole community their playground—they work for the homes, the churches, the schools and everybody.  They are happy.




How successful we are always means how happy we are.  Success and salary are not synonyms.  Just because 
Bud
 Fisher gets $150,000 a year for drawing 
Mutt and Jeff
 cartoons, and some teacher or preacher gets the hundredth part of that, does not mean that 
Bud
 is a hundred times as successful.  It is the world's confession that it would pay a hundred times as much to see a man hit in the head with a brick as to see him hit in the head with an idea!




Get your pay in the joy of doing.  But take money to be honest with the other fellow.  We don't work for money, but take money to work.  We don't live to eat, we eat to live.




So the years pass and our playgrounds enlarge.  And the future will go on infinitely enlarging them, so that we will go on playing with the limitations lifted.  And so there comes an infinite playground—a 
new heaven and a new earth
!





POCKETS AND PARADISES
 HOW TO GET RICH



Parlette Is Richer Than Rockefeller, Owning the Controlling Interest in Everything with His Dollar and His Vote—To Get Richer, Get a Bigger Head and Heart




Before Adam got a pocket, he owned the earth and the fulness thereof.  After he got a pocket, he owned just what he could get into his pocket.
  This is the way Ralph Parlette, the noted lyceum and chautauqua lecturer and editor of The Lyceum Magazine of Chicago, starts out in his unique lecture, 
Pockets and Paradises.
  This lecture has been delivered more than a thousand times and is being published in book form.




But getting that pocket bankrupted the world.  How do we get rich?  By putting things in our pocket?  No—by learning how to use and enjoy.  Everyone of us today has a greater, grander, happier paradise than Adam ever dreamed of.




I have a contract with civilization today whereby I work for the world and the whole world works for me.  No king ever had such servants, power and wealth as I have.  My dollar commands all the other dollars, my vote is the government itself.  I own the newspapers for a nickel.  I own the railroads for two or three cents a mile.  I own million-dollar hotels for a few dollars a day.  For all we can own of anything is what we can used and enjoy.  I command the world's greatest musicians to sing for me and the world's greatest writers to write for me.  Rockefeller finds the oil for me, Morgan takes care of my money, Edison invents for me—and Uncle Sam raises billions and trains millions to make me safe.





Kings in Cabins



Parlette shows up the pitiful money-madness.  He tells of the old man who made a fortune raising hogs and lived in a hogpen himself.  He draws a vivid picture of the mountain streams that flow down into the valleys of Utah, pure and sweet while they flow on and give out, but when they stop flowing and giving out and hoard their waters, their sweetness turns into the salty death of Great Salt Lake.




Then he tells about living in his old log-cabin palace as a boy, 
just a layer of logs and a layer of fresh air, clear up to the clapboards on the roof.  Where they had no weather-reports, for when I could stick my foot out between the logs of our palace and tell whether there was snow enough to go rabbit-hunting before I got out of bed, what did we need of weather reports?
 And of his first pair of trousers, 
mother had made from father's old ones.  She had cut them by faith instead of by sight, so that, like this world before creation, they were without form and void!  Big enough for three boys to wear at the same time, they flopped about me when I walked so that you couldn't tell whether I was going or coming, and yet in my boyhood imagination they were the grandest job of tailoring ever built.




So in his backwoods paradise he learned that real riches are in the heart, not in the pocket.




He tells of the thief who picked his pocket and left him penniless among strangers.  All that day he discovered what the thief couldn't steal.  He had left him his eyes—and his appetite!  He had a million-dollar hunger!  He had left him his health—and he knew its value, for he had fought ten years to live.  He couldn't steal the sunshine, the fresh air, the songs of the birds, the beauties of the landscape, the friends of a lifetime, the opportunities of living, the blessings of citizenship.  The thief had robbed himself, not Parlette!




Finding happiness all around us—that is Paradise Regained!





HURRAHS AND HEROES

HOW TO BE A HERO



Let's Cheer Them Now and Not Wait Till After the Funeral and Write It Into the Resolutions of Respect,
 Says Parlette—Heroes Everywhere in Commonplace Duty




There are two kinds of heroes—ving and dead.  Most of the world's dead heroes ought to be alive, and most of the world's live heroes ought to be—better understood!
 Ralph Parlette, the noted lyceum and chautauqua lecturer and editor of The Lyceum Magazine, Chicago, pays tribute to the great majority of unsung heroes in his lecture, 
Hurrahs and Heroes.




The heroes of my boyhood were the fighters and the sports, because they were popular.  My good father licked me for fighting, but I simply knew father wasn't up-to-date.  Do you see the importance of popularizing the right things?  The men and women of tomorrow will be like the heroes of today.




Our history is glorious with the names of hero leaders.  Side by side with them should be the names of the million hero followers.  And with them millions more of the heroes of commonplace duty.  Most anybody can be a hero for a few minutes, but being a hero year after year in the home is the big stunt.





Hometown Heroes



Parlette tells about when he used to run a newspaper in a country town 
to fill a longfelt want.
  The meanest man in the town ran the other newspaper, and he wouldn't have anything to do with him.  In that town the doctors wouldn't have anything to do with each other, nor the lawyers, nor the merchants, nor even the churches, for each had the true religion and the others were dead wrong in their theology.  But that other editor finally got those people acquainted with each other, got them lined up to working together, and then that town began to boom.  
That other editor did it in spite of my kicking.  He used to wear horns when I saw him.  But the horns were in my eyes.  It took me years to discover that man was one of the truest friends a town ever had.




It was like the hometown band.  When the boys were practicing separately, the people groaned.  But when they got together, everybody cheered.  That editor was a hero.  In that town was a widow woman who brought up a large family to educated usefulness over this nation.  We didn't see it till after her funeral.




Too many homes keep their love and praise and sympathy all canned up like the fruit in their cellar, and they never open a can until company comes!  Let's uncan!  Let's uncan while they can hear it and not wait and write it into the resolutions of sympathy.  Most of those cans down cellar spoil because we do not uncan them.  And the love we keep is the love we uncan.




It is Old Man Moore up in the lighthouse north of Chicago, who is the hurrahless hero—the man who saves thousands of lives every year, just by keeping the lights going and the flash clockwork wound.  Let us hurrah for the heroes of commonplace duty, that more will imitate them.



 the young man  who  David's throne, and when offered his choice of riches, fame, long life, chooses wisdom—and gets all the rest.  He was the hero of wisdom.  Then he pulls aside the curtain and pictures the Battle of the Wilderness—the struggle of the Master over every evil temptation and his glorious victory that opened the way to his unparalleled ministry to men.




Here is the heroism and victory that all can have—winning the Battle of the Wilderness, that opens our way to all success and real happiness, that puts us on our real throne and crowns us with the glory that abides.





WHY I QUIT LYING

HOW TO FIND GOD



Yes, There's a Heaven and a Hell,
 Says Ralph Parlette, 
For I Have Been on the Edges of Both—You Must Quit Arguing and Learn Faith and Become as a Little Child




I used to pray for my neighbors at church on Sunday and prey on them the rest of the week,
 says Ralph Parlette, the noted lyceum and chautauqua lecturer and editor of The Lyceum Magazine, Chicago, in his lecture on 
Why I Quit Lying.




I inherited my religion—got it all 'canned'.  There are fifty-seven varieties of canned religion, none of it any good except what you can yourself.  I used to sing, 'Onward, Christian Soldiers!'  but I didn't go onward—I slid backward.  I used to sing, 'I care not for riches, neither silver nor gold!'—and then put copper money in the basket.  Liar!




So Parlette tells of the earlier years of his life when he confesses he was shamming Christianity without having the joy of it in his heart.  And he tells how he broke away from it all and turned to agnosticism, materialism and atheism.





It Is Faith



I am only a mere child—just a few years old,
 he says.  
I am just beginning to get born again.  I am learning to walk by faith, and the days get happier.  I go thru streets singing today where I used to go swearing.  This is a life of faith.  The whole world runs on faith.  We eat our dinner on faith.  The bank runs on faith.  Faith has brought us out of rock-caves into steam-heated mansions.  And the door to heaven is a door of faith.




Don't argue with the man who wants you to prove God to him.  The man who wants to argue about it is whistling past his spiritual graveyard.  It has got to be intelligent faith, too.  You can believe in electricity and only get struck by lightning.  You must study the laws of electricity to make it perform its wonders.  So with Omnipotence.




Parlette shows a dollar bill.  It is a dirty piece of paper, and yet anybody will take it for a dollar because Uncle Sam has promised to redeem it.  Here is another piece of paper bearing the promise of God.  The Bible is a book of God's banknotes.  And when we accept them with the same intelligent faith with which we take Uncle Sam's promises, we find God makes every one of them good.




He shows how education, art, culture, intellect cannot uplift.  The Greeks had all these and they sank morally.  The message of Jesus the Christ must come into our lives to uplift us and make us happy.





Get the Spark



Parlette tells about his first gas engine years ago in his printing office.  It used to get 
spells
 when it wouldn't run, and he would sit up nights with it 
fanning its feverish brow.
  He would dissect it and tinker with it for hours.  Then in some mysterious way it would run as if nothing had happened.  He found out the trouble was not with the machinery or valves—it was the 
dewflick where it hits on the dofunny.
  He couldn't get a spark.  When he got a spark every- it matters not how much machinery we have, nor how fine it is, it is all helpless until we get the spark—the divine spark to vitalize and energize all our life.




And it isn't human will power.  The world today is full of substitutes for the divine power—schools of success all based on 
putting it over
 by auto-suggestion.  But it is by getting on our trolley—reaching up to the divine power-wire that our life machinery is vitalized.




It is faith—the faith of the little child—hidden from the worldly wise and prudent, that brings the heavenly vision, that clears away the clouds and moves the mountains.  This is the way to God.





Ralph Parlette is Recalled to the Same Places Again and Again

Here Is a Partial List of the Places Where Ralph Parlette Has Lectured Two or More Times





Abilene, Kan


2




Ada, Ohio


17




Ada, Okla


4




Adrian, Mich


2




Alexandria, Ind


3




Alexandria, La


2




Alton, Ill


2




Alva, Okla


5




Alpena, Mich


2




Albany, Ore


2




Amer.  Falls, Ia


2




Amherst, Ohio


2




Ansonia, Ohio


2




Andalusia, Ala


2




Arkan.  City, Kan.


2




Argonia, Kan


3




Arcadia, Neb


2




Arcadia, Ohio


2




Arcanum, Ohio


5




Archbold, Ohio


2




Armstrong, Ill


2




Ashland, Ky


3




Ashley, Ohio


2




Ashb'rnh'm, Mass.


2




Ashland, Ore


3




Atlanta, Ga


5




Atlantic, Iowa


3




Attica, Ind


3




Atwood, Kan


2




Athens, Mich


2




Aurora, Neb


2




Auburn, Neb


3




Aurora, Ind


2




Auburn, Ill


2




Audubon, Ia


2




Austin, Minn


2




Avoca, Iowa


2




Azusa, Cal


2




Bakersfield, Cal


2




Bainbridge, Ohio


2




Battle Creek, Mich.


2




Bay View, Mich


2




Barberton, Ohio


3




Barry, Ill


2




Belleville, Kan


3




Berlin, N. H


2




Beloit, Kan


4




Belle Center, Ohio


5




Berea, Ohio


4




Berne, Ind


2




Bellefontaine, Ohio


3




Beloit, Wis


2




Belvidere, Ill


3




Beaver Dam, Ohio


3




Berea, Ky


3




Benton Hbr., Mich.


2




Belleville, Ohio


2




Bellington, W. Va.


2




Bethel, Ohio


3




Bessemer, Mich


2




Blackwell, Okla


2




Bloomdale, Ohio


6




Blue Mtn., Miss


2




Blair, Neb


2




Blue Rapids, Kan.


4




Bloomington, Ill


3




Bloomville, Ohio


2




Bluffton, Ohio


2




Booneville, Mo


2




Bottineau, N. D


2




Bowling Green, Mo.


2




Bowling Green, O


2




Bozeman, Mont


3




Brookville, Pa


4




Broken Bow, Neb


2




Bradford, Ohio


4




Breckenridge, Colo.


2




Brighton, Ohio


2




Brookville, Ind


2




Brownsville, Tenn.


3




Bradner, Ohio


2




Bristol, Neb


2




Bridgeport, Ohio


2




Buena Vista, Pa


2




Bucyrus, Ohio


2




Burr Oak, Kan


2




Butler, Ind


2




Butte, Mont


2




Castalia, Ohio


2




Canton, Ill


2




Caldwell, Kan


2




Carrollton, Ga


2




Carrollton, Ky


2




Carrollton, Mo


2




Carrollton, Ohio


2




Camp Point, Ill


2




Catlettsburg, Ky


2




Carthage, Ind


2




Canal Dover, Ohio


2




Cedarville, Ohio


2




Canton, Ohio


2




Centralia, Ill


2




Centralia, Kan


2




Central City, Neb


2




Centerburg, Ohio


2




Cedar Rapids, Iowa


2




Cedartown, Ga


2




Chapman, Kan


2




Cheney, Kan


2




Charlotte, Mich


2




Chicago, Ill


12




Chesterhill, Ohio


3




Chattanooga, Tenn.


2




Chickasha, Okla


2




Cherry Fork, Ohio


2




Chadron, Neb


4




Charleston, W. Va.


4




Cincinnati, Ohio


15




Cleveland, Ohio


20




Claflin, Kan


2




Clinton, Ill


2




Clearwater, Kan


2




Clearmont, Mo


2




Clarksburg, Ohio


2




Clarksburg, Ind


2




Clovis, Cal


2




Columbus, Kan


2




Columbus, Ohio


11




Columbus Jct., Ia.


2




Coatesville, Pa


2




Concordia, Kan


3




Colchester, Ill


2




Coleraine, Minn


2




Columbia, S. C.


2




Commerce, Tex


2




Conway, Ark


2




Coopersville, Mich


2




Coshocton, Ohio


3




Columbus Grove, O.


3




Corning, Ohio


2




Columbiana, Ohio.


2




Cocoa, Fla


2




Covington, Ga


2




Covington, Tenn


2




Crystal Falls, Mich.


2




Cresco, Iowa


2




Crestline, Ohio


2




Cumberland, Iowa


2




Cynthiana, Ind


2




Cynthiana, Ky


2




Danville, Va


2




David City, Neb


2




Danville, Ohio


2




Dana, Ind


3




Dawson Spgs., Ky.


2




Dayton, Ohio


8




Decatur, Ill


2




Detroit, Mich


8




Detroit, Minn


2




Deadwood, S. D


2




Delphos, Ohio


2




Delta, Colo


2




DeKalb, Ill


2




Dewey, Okla


2




Dixon, Ill


3




Doniphan, Mo


2




Dorchester, Neb


2




Dothan, Ala


3




Dubuque, Iowa


7




Dundee, Mich


2




Dublin, Ind


2




Du Bois, Pa


2




DuQuoin, Ill


2




Durant, Okla


2




Dwight, Ill


2




East Liberty, Ohio


2




Dyersburg, Tenn


2




East Liverpool, O.


2




East Palestine, O.


2




Edinburg, Ill


2




Edon, Ohio


2




Edgar, Neb


3




El Reno, Okla


3




Elwood, Ind


3




Elyria, Ohio


4




Ellinsburg, Wash


2




Elizabethtown, Ky.


2




Ellis, Kan


3




Elloree, S. C


2




Ellis, Kan


2




Ellsworth, Kan


2




Ellsberry, Mo


2




Enid, Okla


2




Ennis, Tex


3




Enderlin, N. D


2




Endicott, Wash


2




Erie, Pa


2




Esbon, Kan


2




Eskridge, Kan


3




Estherville, Iowa


2




Eugene, Ore


2




Eureka, Kan


2




Evansville, Ind


4




Everett, Pa


2




Everett, Wash


3




Farmington, Ill


2




Farmington, Iowa


2




Fairfield, Ill


4




Fairfield, Iowa


2




Fairfield, Neb


2




Fairbury, Neb


2




Kingston, Mo


3




Falmouth, Ky


3




Falls City, Neb


3




Farmington, Iowa


2




Fayettesville, N. C.


2




Fenton, Mich


2




Fitchburg, Mass


3




Findlay, Ohio


2




Fitzgerald, Ga


2




Fletcher, Ohio


2




Flora, Ill


2




Forest, Ohio


2




Forest City, Iowa


2




Fort Wayne, Ind


3




Freeport, Ohio


3




Fremont, Ohio


3




Fredericksburg, O


2




Fremont, Ohio


3




Fredericktown, O


2




Freeport, Ill


2




Friendship, Tenn.


2




Fullerton, Neb


3




Fullerton, Cal


2




Fulton, Mo


2




Gainesville, Fla


2




Gainesville, Ga


2




Garnett, Kan


3




Gary, Ind


3




Galesburg, Ill


4




Galena, Ohio


2




Girard, Ill


2




Glouster, Ohio


2




Goodland, Kan


2




Good Hope, Ohio


2




Greenville, Ill


3




Greenville, Ohio


2




Greenfield, Ind


2




Greenville, S. C


2




Greenwood, Miss


2




Grove City, Pa


3




Guthrie, Okla


2




Gravity, Iowa


2




Guide Rock, Neb


2




Hawkinsville, Ga


2




Harlan, Iowa


2




Hart, Mich


2




Hamilton, Ill


3




Hamilton, Ohio


3




Harper, Kan


2




Hastings, Neb


3




Hamler, Ohio


3




Harrisburg, Ill


2




Harrod, O


2




Manhattan, Kan


2




Mason City, Iowa


2




Harvard, Ill


2




Havana, Ill


2




Haven, Kan


3




Havensville, Kan


2




Hays, Kan


3




Helena, Ark


2




Helena, Mont


2




Hebron, Ind


2




Hiawatha, Kan


2




Hillsboro, Ohio


2




Hillsboro, Ill


2




Hicksville, Ohio


2




Hickory, Pa


2




Horton, Kan


2




Hobart, Okla


2




Howell, Mich


2




Holly, Mich


2




Harvard, Ill


2




Howard City, Mich


2




Howard, Kan


2




Hope, N. D


3




Hot Springs, Ark


3




Holton, Kan


2




Holgate, Ohio


3




Hopkinsville, Ky


2




Houston, Tex


2




Hutsonville, Ill


3




Humboldt, Tenn


2




Huntington, Ind


2




Hunter, N. D


2




Huntington, W. Va.


2




Hudson, Mich


2




Hugo, Okla


2




Indianapolis, Ind


3




Independence, Mo


2




Independence, Ia


2




Ionia, Mich


2




Irondale, Ohio


2




Jackson, Mich


3




Janesville, Wis


5




Jefferson City, Mo


2




Jeffersonville, O


2




Jerome, Ohio


2




Joliet, Ill.


2




Kansas City, Mo.


6




Kalkaska, Mich


2




Kenton, Ohio


3




Kentland, Ind


2




Kilbourne, Wis


2




Kingman, Kan


2




Kittanning, Pa


2




Kirkwood, Ill


2




Moweaqua, Ill


2




Monteagle, Tenn


2




Kirksvile, Mo


2




Knightstown, Ind.


2




Kokomo, Ind


3




Laclede, Mo


2




Lake Orion, Mich.


2




Lakeside, Ohio


2




Lakeview, Ohio


3




Lamar, Col


2




Lawrenceville, Ill.


2




Lanark, Ill


2




Lancaster, Ohio


3




Lamoyne, Ohio


2




Lafayette, Ohio


3




Lansing, Mich


2




Lawrence, Kans


2




La Rue, Ohio


4




Leland, Ohio


2




Lewiston, Ill


2




Lewistown, Ill


2




Leeds, N. D


2




Leesburg, Ohio


2




Lexington, Ill


2




Lexington, Neb


3




Liberty, Mo


2




Lincoln Park, Kan.


5




Liberty, Mo


2




Lincoln, Ala


2




Lincoln, Neb


7




Litchfield, Ill


2




Live Oaks, Fla


2




Lima, Ohio


8




Lodi, Cal


2




Los Angeles, Cal.


8




Las Animas, Col.


2




Lodi, Ohio


2




Logan, Kan


2




Long Beach, Cal


2




Loveland, Ohio


3




Louisville, Ky


4




Louisiana, Mo


2




Luverne, Ala


5




Luverne, Minn


3




Lynnville, Iowa


2




Lykens, Ohio


2




Lyndon, Kan


2




Lyons, Ohio


2




Malden, Mass


2




Mansfield, La


3




Marshall, Minn


2




Macon, Ga


2




Macon, Mo


2




Mantua, Ohio


2




Northfield, Minn


2




Nora Springs, Ia


2




Manton, Mich


2




Marion, Ohio


6




Marietta, Ohio


2




Maysville, Ky


2




Marblehead, O


2




Martinsville, Ind


2




Madison, Wis


3




Madison, Ind


3




Magnolia, Ohio


2




Malvern, Ohio


2




Mason, Ohio


2




Mason City, Ill


2




Marcus, Iowa


2




Markle, Ind


2




Martinsville, Ohio


2




Mason City, Ill


3




Maysville, Mo


3




McCook, Neb


4




McComb, Ohio


2




McLean, Ill


2




McKenzie, Tenn


3




McMinnville, Tenn.


2




Medford, Okla


2




Merom, Ind


3




Mendon, Ohio


2




Metamora, Ohio


2




Menominee, Mich.


2




Mendon, Mich


2




Meridian, Miss


4




Milton, Ore


2




Miami, Ariz


2




Milwaukee, Wis


6




Mineral Ridge, O.


2




Minneapolis, Kan


2




Mishawaka, Ind


2




Midland, Mich


3




Minneapolis, Minn.


2




Miamisburg, Ohio


3




Minden City, Mich.


2




Middleburg, Ohio.


2




Milford, Mass


2




Monroe, Ga


2




Monroe, Wis


2




Montpelier, Ind


2




Morley, Mich


3




Mounds, Okla


2




Mound Ridge, Kan.


2




Moundsville, W. Va.


4




Montevideo, Minn.


3




Morral, Ohio


2




Pemberville, O


2




Perry, Okla


3




Montpelier, Ohio


2




Mo. Valley, Iowa


2




Mt. Clemens, Mich.


3




Mt. Vernon, Mo


3




Mt. Lake Park, Md.


2




Mt. Vernon, Ill


2




Mt. Pleasant, O


2




Mt. Cory, Ohio


2




Mt. Olympus, Ind.


2




Mt. Vernon, Ill


2




Mt. Victory, Ohio.


2




Mt. Moriah, Ohio.


2




Murfreesboro, Tenn.


4




Muncie, Ind


3




Naperville, Ill


2




Narka, Kan


2




Nelsonville, O


2




New Albany, Ind


4




New Vienna, Ohio.


3




New Rockford, N. D.


2




New Bethlehem, Pa.


3




New Carlisle, O


2




New Vienna, O


2




New Madison, O


2




New Richmond, O


2




Newcomerstown, Ohio


2




Newell, Ia


2




Newman, Ill


2




New Lexington, O.


3




Neoga, Ill


2




Neodesha, Kan


4




Newark, Ohio


2




New Providence, Iowa


2




Nevada, Mo


3




Nebraska City, Neb.


2




Newton, Kan


4




Niles, Mich


3




N. Lewisburg, O.


3




N. Manchester, Ind.


2




Nokomis, Ill


2




Northwood, N. D.


3




Northwood, Iowa.


2




Norton, Kan


2




Norwood, Ohio


2




Roseburg, Wash


2




Rushsylvania, O


2




N. Baltimore, O


2




Nortonville, Kan


2




Oakland, Neb


3




Oakland City, Ind.


2




Oak Hill, W. Va.


3




Oakley, Kan


2




Oklahoma City, Okla.


4




Olathe, Kan


2




Ontario, Cal


2




Onsted, Mich


2




Onaga, Kan


2




Orange, Cal


3




Orrville, Ohio


2




Ord, Neb.


2




Orlando, Fla


2




Oregon, Ill


2




Oregon, Mo


2




Osceola, Neb


2




Osage, Iowa


2




Ottawa, Ill


2




Ottawa, Kan


3




Oxford, Ohio


2




Oxford, Ind


2




Paducah, Ky


2




Paintsville, Ky


2




Pasco, Wash


2




Paxton, Ill


2




Paris, Ill


2




Parsons, W. Va


2




Pawnee, Neb


3




Pasadena, Cal


2




Parkston, S. D


2




Pawnee, Okla


3




Pana, Ill


2




Pandora, Ohio


2




Paoli, Ind


2




Parker, S. D


2




Parry, Ill


2




Parkersburg, W. Va.


2




Pataskala, Ohio


2




Pawhuska, Okla


2




Peoria, Ill


2




Petersburg, N. D.


2




Petersburg, Ind.


2




Peru, Neb


2




Peninsula, Ohio


2




Pennville, Ind


2




Pennsville, Ohio


2




Pensacola, Fla


2




Pentwater, Mich


2




Starkweather, N. D.


2




Peebles, Ohio


3




Phillipsburg, Kan.


2




Phoenix, Ariz


2




Pigeon, Mich


2




Pittsfield, Ill


2




Pickerington, O


2




Pierre, S. D


3




Plain City, O


2




Piqua, Ohio


2




Pipestone, Minn


2




Pittsford, Mich


2




Pittsburgh, Pa


9




Plainville, Kan


2




Platteville, Wis


3




Pleasant Hill, O


2




Pocatello, Ida


2




Polo, Ill


2




Poplar Bluff, Mo.


3




Pond Creek, Okla.


2




Ponca City, Okla


2




Pontiac, Ill.


2




Pontiac, Mich


2




Poseyville, Ind


3




Pratt, Kan


2




Princeton, Ind


2




Quincy, Ill


2




Randolph, Kan


2




Rapid City, S. D.


2




Ravenna, O


2




Reno, Nev.


2




Rensselaer, Ind


2




Reynoldsburg, O


2




Redwood Falls, Minn.


2




Ripley, N. Y


2




Ridgeway, Pa


2




Ripleyville, Ohio


2




Richwood, W. Va.


2




Ridgeway, Ohio


3




Rigby, Idaho


2




Rising Sun, Ind


2




Rising Sun, Ohio


2




Richmond, Ky


3




Richwood, Ohio


2




Rockford, Ohio


3




Rockyford, Col


2




Roodhouse, Ill


2




Robinson, Ill


2




Rolfe, Iowa


2




Rome City, Ind


2




Rockport, Mo


4




Roundhead, Ohio


3




Rushville, Ind


2




Russell, Kan


2




Sabetha, Kan


3




Salina, Kan


3




San Francisco, Cal.


5




St. Ste, Marie, Mich.


3




Sandwich, Ill.


4




Sanger, Cal.


2




Savannah, Ga


2




Savannah, Mo


2




Sabina, Ohio


2




Scottville, Mich.


2




Scranton, Pa


2




Seattle, Wash


11




Sedalia, Mo


4




Sharpsburg, Ill


2




Sheridan, Ind


2




Sheridan, Mo


2




Sherman, Tex


2




Shadyside, Ohio


2




Shelby, Ohio


2




Shreve, Ohio


2




Sharon, Wis


2




Shelbyville, Ill


2




Shawnee, Okla


3




Sheldon, Iowa


3




Shinnstch, W. Va.


2




Sidney, Ohio


4




Sidell, Ill


3




Smith Center, Kan.


4




South Bend, Ind.


2




Sparta, Ohio


4




Spencerville, O


2




Spearflsh, S. D.


3




Sparta, Mich


2




Springboro, Ohio


2




Spokane, Wash


2




Springfield, Ohio


3




Stronghurst, Wis.


2




St. Louis, Mo


3




St. Clairsville, O


2




St. Paul, Minn


2




St. Petersburg, Fla.


2




St. Joseph, Mo


7




St. Charles, Mo


2




Stockton, Cal


2




Stockport, Ohio


2




Sterling, Col


2




Sterling, Ill


4




Stillwater, Okla


3




Statesboro, Ga


3




Stromsburg, Neb


3




Sutton, W. Va


3




Sullivan, Ind


2




Sulphur Springs, Ohio


2




Swainsboro, Ga


2




Swayzee, Ind


2




Swanton, Ohio


3




Sylvania, Ga


2




Tampa, Fla


3




Tell City, Ind


3




Temple, Ariz


2




Thomaston, Ga


5




Tiffin, Ohio


2




Tipton, Iowa


2




Tipton, Ind.


2




Toledo, Ohio


9




Topeka, Kan


5




Topeka, Ind.


2




Trenton, Mo.


2




Trumbull, Neb


2




Troy, Ala


2




Traer, Iowa


2




Tripoli, Iowa


2




Turlock, Cal


2




Turon, Kan


2




Tulsa, Okla


2




Tunnelton, W. Va.


2




Tuscola, Ill


3




Union City, Ind


3




Ulysses, Pa


2




Urbana, Ill


2




Vandalia, Ohio


2




Van Wert, Ohio


3




Valparaiso, Ind


6




Valley City, N. D.


2




Vassar, Mich


2




Vanceburg, Ky


2




Vandalia, Ill


2




Vandergrift, Pa


2




Valdosta, Ga


2




Versailles, Ind.


2




Versailles, O


2




Vidalia, Ga.


2




Vineyard Haven, Mass.


2




Vincennes, Ind


2




Vicksburg, Mich


3




Virginia, Ill


2




Waitsburg, Wash.


2




Walterboro, S. C


2




Wayeross, Ga


3




Wayne, Neb


4




Wahoo, Neb.


3




Washburn, Ill


2




Washington, Kan


3




Washington, Pa


2




Warren, Ind


2




Waldo, Ohio


2




Washington, Ind


2




Warren, Ohio


2




Warren, Pa


2




Waterman, Ill


2




Wapakoneta, Ohio


3




Waynesville, Ohio


3




Washington C. H., Ohio


3




Waynesburg, Pa


2




Wauconda, Ill


2




Wellington, Kan


2




Weatherford, Okla.


3




Webster Springs, W. Va


2




Westminister, S. C.


2




West Liberty, O.


2




West Lafayette, O.


3




West Mansfield, O.


3




West Union, O


3




West Unity, Ohio


2




West Milton, Ohio


2




Weston, W. Va


2




Wellston, Ohio


3




Wheeling, W. Va


9




Whitehall, Mich


2




White Pigeon, Mich.


2




Whitewater, Kan


2




Whiting, Ind


3




Willow City, N. D.


2




Williston, N. D.


4




Windsor, Mo


2




Winona Lake, Ind.


7




Wichita, Kan


2




Willshire, Ohio


3




Windom, Minn


2




Williamsburg, Ohio


2




Williamsport, Ind.


2




Williamstown, O.


2




Wilson, Kan


2




Wilkesbarre, Pa


2




Woodhull, Ill


2




Woodward, Okla


3




Yale, Mich


2




York, Neb


3







Ralph Parlette's Lectures that Grew Into Books Having Nationwide Sale



Is That Lecture Printed?



RALPH PARLETTE is asked that question so often after delivering a lecture, that the work of putting his best known lectures into books was undertaken.  The overflow of many deliveries of a lecture has been put into the book, far more than could be delivered to an audience.




THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS,
 the lecture that has been delivered 3,000 times, and for which the public has paid a HALF MILLION DOLLARS to hear, is now in its fourth edition.  Cloth, large, clear print, $1.00, postpaid.




BIG BUSINESS,
 equally interesting, 
A Book of Rejoicing,
 
the business of abolishing work and turning this world into a playground,
 similar binding to 
The University of Hard Knocks,
 $1.00, postpaid.




OTHER PARLETTE LECTURES are soon to be ready in book form.  These books can be secured thru any dealer, or will be sent direct by the publishers.  The Parlette-Padget Company, 122 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill.




The University of Hard Knocks




Judge Ben B. Lindsey, Colorado's Famous Juvenile Judge Endorses 
Hard Knocks




The University of Hard Knocks
 is a great, big boost for everybody that will read it and everybody ought to read it.  I am glad that so many nuggets from that delightful and wonderful literature of Ralph Parlette have been put in book form.  People ought to buy them by the gross and send them to their friends
—
Ben B. Lindsey
.




William Jennings Bryan Commends 
Hard Knocks




Having had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Ralph Parlette lecture and knowing the interest which he arouses and the pleasure that he gives to his audience, I am glad to commend his book, 
Hard Knocks,
 which is full of simple and practical philosophy.
—
William Jennings Bryan.




Gillian, America's Great Humorist, Praises 
Hard Knocks




If ever a vital, breathing, red-blooded message was put into print in such manner as to retain the human—nay, even the voice quality and charm of its original and always fascinating delivery on the lyceum or any other platform, that message is 
The University of Hard Knocks
 as put into book form at the clamorous request of the million or so who have heard it from Parlette's lips.  No home (or public) library is as good as possible, without this bookized lecture.
—
Strickland Gillian.




Biggest Dollar's Worth I've Had




I paid a dollar for the 'Hard Knocks' and read it aloud to my boy.  And, honestly, it was the biggest dollar's worth I've had in many moons.
—
J. C. Chamberlayne, Associate Editor, Schenectady
 (
N. Y.
) 
Union-Star.




Too Good to Loan




A friend of mine gave me a book to read the other day.  It was 'The University of Hard Knocks.'  That man, Ralph Parlette, who wrote this book, knows what he is talking about.  I want two of those books.  Send them to me parcel post, C. O. D., or write me at once, name the price and I'll send it on the next mail.  You might name me a price on a dozen of these books as I have some friends who would profit by reading that lecture and I wouldn't want to loan my book when I get it.
—
Fred C. Dymock, Wichita, Kansas.




Wish Everyone Could Read It




I consider 'The University of Hard Knocks' the most appealing bit of preachment I have ever read or heard, and I wish every human soul, at home and abroad, could read it.
—
Mrs. Gertrude Lowell Carr, Sec., Chaffee-Noble School of Expression, Detroit, Mich.




Big Business A BOOK OF REJOICING





The Demand for Them Grows



RALPH PARLETTE'S lectures in book form have developed a national demand.  People who read them recommend them to others and buy more copies for their families and friends.  Their inspiration, cheer, philosophy and fun make them valuable in schools, colleges, camps, hospitals, business offices, as well as in homes.




The books have been widely sold and recommended by influential book houses like A. C. McClurg & Co., John Wanamaker, Baker & Taylor, and by the great church publishing houses.





Recommended for the 
Sammies



Private Harold R. Peat, the famous
 
Private
 Peat
 war lecturer and author of one of the most widely read war books, recommends 
Hard Knocks
 to the army men (Hundreds of copies have already gone to the camps):




'The University of Hard Knocks' is simply great!  Its humor is bully and its philosophy is the sort that puts the stuff in you.  As one who has been thru, I believe every soldier at home and the front should read this book.





DESIGNED AND PRINTED THE KING SERVICE COMPANY