yle honestly gave his opinion, and the correct
one, that taking one thing with another you can make just as much money
in England as you can in America or the Colonies. Of course there are
exceptions,--I might more truly say accidents. Even a poor speaker, if
he happens to be a clergyman (and some critics are unkind enough to say
that these generally go together), and an author who has written a
successful story, may in America have a great chance of making money,
for the publishers and booksellers will advertise and push him so as to
sell his books,--they will go so far as turning their shops into ticket
offices. Then, too, he will find the _meenisters_, particularly if he is
a Scotchman, will advertise him in advance from their pulpits, and
probably in return get the "lecturer" to preach a sermon. Consequently
he has two publics to work upon which no other lecturer or reader can
procure,--the religious and the literary. But that is not a genuine test
of the professional lecturer or reader. All literary men on the platform
will get a certain number of people who have read their books in a
celebrity-hunting country. They want to see the author, and once they
have seen him they are satisfied. Return visits I know of, such as
these, have been appalling failures. No, a man must give an
entertainment which is in itself amusing and of such stuff that people
will go even if any one else had given it--metal attractive to his
audience, instead of merely being looked upon as a curiosity in the same
way that one looks upon an orchid in a flower-show or a prize ox at
Islington. But for the ordinary man, no matter how good he may be, to
expect to have a triumphal tour, returning with a shipload of American
dollars, is, believe me, absurd on the face of it. The lecture business
died out years ago. When that country was younger all the people in the
provinces attended lectures as part of their daily education, but now
that class of entertainment is as out-of-date as a German Reed
entertainment.

I confess that I was overworked at one time. As an illustration of mere
physical endurance it is perhaps worth recording. In fact, much in these
pages might well have been published under the title of "Confessions of
Endurance" in Sandow's magazine or in the _Lancet_, for the edification
of those professional men who give advice to others not to overwork and
invariably overwork themselves at the same time. Travelling every day,
giving "The Hu