Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1916 — DR. ROY L. SMITH, LECTURER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DR. ROY L. SMITH, LECTURER

Second Number of Lecture Course Next Monday Night. The second number of the lecture course will be held at the Presbyterian church Monday evening, December 18. Admission 35c. Following i"s a sketch of the lecturer: Roy L. Smith comes out- of i the dynamic west with all the enthusiasm and vigor of the frontiersman. After ten years of firing furnaces and painting signs he completed high school and entered college with §9.35 as his total resource and now holds three degrees from famous universities. At twenty-one he was preaching In a western Kansas town and filling lecture engagements on nearby lyceum courses. At twenty-three Redpath was advertising him as “the youngest professional lecturer In the United States.” At twenty-five Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus met him on the Chautauquas and invited him to come to Chicago as

his associate, which position he occupied for two years. During his university course he filled nearly a hundred paid lecture engagements in and near Chicago. .As a student he was called upon to supply some of the most prominent pulpits in his- denomination In Chicago and for several months was the acting pastor of the famous People's church of St Paul, Minn. At present he is at the bead of an institutional church in one of the most difli cult fields In Chicago. As a lecturer Mr. Smith is not an experiment. In addition to four years in Lyceum he has spent four seasons on Redpath Chautauquas lecturing and superintending. His carefully trained voice is a heavy bass of great power and attractiveness. Few speakers can boast of a better vocal equipment. In style he is vigorous, earnest and at times Intensely dramatic. His sentences are clean cut and epigrammatic. Boys and girls listen to Mr. Smith because he is simple and direct. The youth listens to him because he is young, alert and witty. The adult listens to him because he is thoughtful and logical.

ROY L. SMITH.