Robert J. Burdette

              "The man who cannot laugh  is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem."—Carlyle: Sartor Resartus.
Robert J. Burdette
1876
1901
"Let Me Have Audience for a Word or Two"
Redpath Lyceum Bureau
BOSTON :: CHICAGO
ROBERT J. BURDETTE
IN DECEMBER, 1876, Robert J. Burdette, then editor of the Burlington (Iowa) Hawkeye, administered his first lecture to an audience in the opera house at Keokuk, Iowa. The effect of the treatment was immediate, all the patients survived, declared them¬selves happily benefited, and the greater number of them are still living. In the score of years since then, this Physician of the Merry Heart has dispensed his "Good Medicine " in answer to over three thousand calls; not a large practice, but a very comfortable one. After the fashion of the old practitioners of his school, he still visits his patients at their homes, carries his " good medicines " with him, and fills his prescriptions from his own saddle-bags. In making his twenty-sixth annual visit, he wishes his patients, old and new, good health, good cheer and good times. Expressing his gratitude for their extravagant kindness, their multiplied favors and their exaggerated appreciation of his poor services, he can only say, with Hamlet, "Beggar that I am, I am poor even in thanks, but I thank you."
In presenting the same old prescriptions for the same old ailments of the same old human race, Mr. Burdette solicits a continuance of your friendship, and, remembering that "modesty is to merit what shades are to the figures in a picture —giving strength and heightening," he waits by his chair for a moment, as the custom of the platform is, and prays you to listen while well-known voices of world¬wide celebrity and age-long fame bespeak for him the countenance of his audience. In conclusion, the management desires to say that the testimonials which follow were entirely unsolicited by either the lecturer or his managers, and that Mr. Burdette has no personal acquaintance with the distinguished writers who   are   pleased   thus   involuntarily to commend   him and   endorse   his  work.
THEY SAY—
" He makes a July day short as December; And, with his varying childness, cures in me Thoughts that would thick my blood."—The Whiter's Tale.
" A merrier man, Within the limits of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal."
—Love's Labor's Lost.
" I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite
jest, of most excellent fancy."
- Hamlet.
" Nobly he yokes A smiling with a sigh; as if the sigh Was that it was for not being such a smile."
— Cymbeline.
" From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he is all mirth —he hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks."                               —Much Ado About Nothing.
" On the tip of his subduing tongue All kinds of arguments and questions deep, All replication prompt and reason strong, For his advantage still did wake and sleep; To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep, He had the dialect and different skill, Catching all passions in his craft of will."
A Lover's Complaint.
Cairo, Egypt, Feb. 14, 1901.
REDPATH LYCEUM BUREAU, Boston, U. S. A.
Dear Man — Where have I been since last June that I didn't make any speeches last winter ? Oh, well, I had been traveling up and down the land of America under your own piloting for twenty-five years on "one-night stands " and I felt that I needed the change which travel alone could give to such a sedentary life. So I set my sails in order, and smote the sound¬ing billows and came abroad. I went to London to visit the Queen and now I am going back again to call on the King; went up and down that land from castle to cathedral and then hied me to Scotland to pick up a collec¬tion of " burrs " to mix with my " Hs ; " learned Edinboro by heart, which is the only way to learn Scotland; visited the Highlands and all the Loch country; tramped and stage-coached and boated; came back to England and loitered in the Lake country of " Wordsworthshire; " went to Paris to get rid of people who wanted to know if " I had been to the Exposition ; " went to Germany and sailed up the Rhine as far as Mayence; got off the boat and went to Munich ; took in Oberammergau and the " Passion Play;" went to Zurich and thence to Lucerne; climbed mountains till my shoes wore out; went to Geneva and studied Galvanism; crossed the mountains and went to the Lake of Como to see if it was all true; went to Milan to count the statues on the Cathedral; got to Venice and found it hard work to tear myself away from the loveliest " loafing place " on earth — and it's on the water; then went to Florence and lost myself in a thousand miles of picture gallaries; advertised for myself, got out and went to Rome to see the Pope and the new King and Queen ; then went to Naples; visited Pompeii, but didn't locate there ; dead town; climbed Vesuvius and looked into the crater; nothing in it; drove along the coast of Italy as far as Paestum; got on ship again and came to Cairo; steam-boated up the Nile as far as the first cataract; went into more tombs than I supposed there were in the world; came back down the river a mile at a time ; have been enjoying Cairo and its bewildering streets and fascinating bazars; next week we sail for Jaffa, and thence go to Jerusalem ; spend about a month in Palestine, then go to Damascus; visit Baalbec, and get back to Egypt again; then sail for Athens; spend the rest of March in Greece; then a little time in Turkey; then to Austria and Germany; then another little stay in Paris; thence to England for part of June, and home by the first of July, ready to lecture the rest of my life, for I feel that I will need a little travel for a change.    Yours as ever,                    ROBERT J. BURDETTE.
Very Funny, Very True, Very Sweet
EMPORIA (KANSAS) GAZETTE—Emporia is a better town today because Robert J. Burdette was here last night with his "merry heart." A thousand people came to Albert Taylor hall to hear him, and a thousand burdens are lighter today and ten thousand cares have fled. Men with money bags have come to town and left sorrow and wrinkles in their trail. Men with knotty problems .to solve have visited Emporia and headaches and weariness have followed them. Men with green-eyed envious visions of other people's iniquity have come and heartaches and ranklings have seared their scars upon those who listened. But the Man with the Merry Heart came and today God's smile of benediction is on the dull old town. The lecture was all very funny, and all very true, and all very sweet — gentle and kind as a May breeze in an orchard with the apple trees in bloom. The Little Man with the Merry Heart helped old Emporia out of its crusty rut — so God bless him for his coming.— WILL A. WHITE.
Natural and Sympathetic
MINNEAPOLIS TIMES — There has not been a lecture in Minneapolis this season that created a stronger impression upon the audience. The predominating trait of Burdette's humor is its naturalness. It is not funny for the sake of rais¬ing a laugh, but is sympathetic of this merry old world in which we live.
Philosophically Sound
WINNIPEG (MANITOBA) FREE PRESS — Burdette's lectures are more than simply amusing; they have a good moral tendency and are philosophic¬ally sound. They are entertaining and instruc¬tive. While they keep the hearers in roars of laughter for a good part of the time they also contain passages of a serious character, well ex¬pressed reflections and imaginative passages of considerable beauty.
A Sweet Philosophy
TACOMA LEDGER — Robert J. Burdette, he of the small body and great heart—the merry heart, that doeth good like a medicine—held the close attention of a large audience in the Tacoma Theater last night, and did them good indeed with his medicine, which was first merry and then tender, and that touched many a responsive chord in all the listening hearts. Plenty of sweet phil¬osophy was wrapped up in the humor of the man whose own funny stories were first snatched out of a life of continual labor to cheer and brighten the evening hours for his invalid wife.
Geneseo Letter
Burdette is coming. Burdette, the laughing phil¬osopher, the prince of pathos! Burdette, the wizard, who jingles among the bells of his cap the key to every human heart! Burdette the only: when he was made there was no more material left, and there can never be another Bob Burdette. This can be said of few who live or have lived. Of Addison was material left that out-Addisoned Addison, and there was left much of the rare spiritual essence for which we remem¬ber Sam Johnson, and Ben Jonson, and Charley Lamb, and Dick Steele, and Tom Chatterton, and Noll Goldsmith, and Tom Moore, and Charley Dickens. We know there was, because some rare and radiant alchemist has taken from all and made of it Bob Burdette! There have been wits, alas, too many! whose weapons were the lance, the sword, the knife ! and with these would they thrust, and pierce and flay us, till we were put to the absurd extremity of howling with dismay, while our eyes are alight with admiration at the keenness of the blade. Other unspeakable wits there be who depend upon the effluvia of the cesspool for their success; but here is a man who, if he could make a million men laugh at the cost of a single hidden tear from some poor stung one's eye, that tear would never fall. And his language is as clean as his thoughts are white.
— HENRY L. KINER.
EPILOGUE
" I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you: and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women (as I perceive by your simpering none of you hate the7n) that between you and the women, the play may please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not; and I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make court’sy, bid me Farewell."—As You Like It.