As for me it was soon obvious there was no place for my type of work on the new _American_. If I were to be free I must again give up security. Hardly, however, had I acted on my resolution before along came Mr. Louis Alber of the Coit Alber Lecture Bureau, one of the best known concerns at that time in the business. Mr. Alber had frequently invited me to join his troupe, and always I had laughed at the invitation: I was too busy; moreover I had no experience, did not know how to lecture. Now, however, it was a different matter. I was free, and I might forget the situation in which I found myself by undertaking a new type of work. Was not lecturing a natural adjunct to my profession? Moreover, Mr. Alber wanted me to speak on these New Ideals in Business which I had been discussing in the magazine, and he wanted me to speak on what was known as a Chautauqua circuit, a kind of peripatetic Chautauqua. Perhaps my willingness to go had an element of curiosity in it, a desire to find out what this husky child of my old friend Chautauqua was like. At all events I signed up for a seven weeks’ circuit, forty-nine days in forty-nine different places. 15 A NEW PROFESSION It was not until my signed contract to speak for forty-nine consecutive days in forty-nine different places was laid before me that I realized I had agreed to do what I did not know how to do. I had never in my life stood on my feet and made a professional speech. To begin with—could I make people hear? I felt convinced that I had something to say, and so did my sponsors—but to what good if I could not be heard? What was this thing they called “placing the voice”? I went to my friend Franklin Sargent of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, told him of my predicament. After a first test he agreed with me that I did not know how to use my voice, and that unless I could learn I was letting myself in for a bad failure. Mr. Sargent was good enough to take me on as a pupil, uninteresting a one as I must have been. He began by putting me on the simplest exercises but with severe instructions about keeping them up. I went about my apartment day and night shouting “Ma, Me, Mi, Mo,” “Ba, Be, Bi, Bo.” I learned that the voice must come from the diaphragm, and that the diaphragm must be strong to throw it out for an hour at a time. Regularly every morning and every night, lying on my back with books on my stomach, I breathed deeply until I could lift four or five volumes.