After that first interview I thought I would call on Mr. Wellcome again. I found him still eagerly engaged in the preparations for the coming banquet. He was very cordial. I told him that I had called to see if I could ascertain any further news about our hero. He assured me that I should surely see him at the dinner; but he could give me one piece of news: Stanley was not going to lecture. I did not tell him, or any one else, that I had seen Stanley. Business kept me fast in London until early in June. It was Friday, the 6th, when I received a telegram from Stanley at Ascot, asking me to meet him at his London apartments at five o’clock that day. I was there, and he met me cordially, saying: “Major Pond, on the 25th of September I am to be married, and on the 10th of October I take a degree at Cambridge. I owe you eighty-nine lectures. It is needless for me to tell you that I have received some very fabulous offers. I show you two of them, but I conceal the signatures.” They were very dazzling. I recognized the writing of one of them. It was an offer of fifteen hundred dollars a lecture for one hundred lectures, and all expenses from London and return. “I have no thought of accepting them. I want you to go to your hotel and put your proposition in writing, whatever you wish; do the best you can for me. Come Sunday at five o’clock and we will sign the papers. We will have a little dinner together. I will introduce you to the future Mrs. Stanley. Then you can go about your work.” I was there with the proposition made out in duplicate, and found a card on the door, which read as follows: * * * * * “MAJOR: Unavoidably called away. Put the papers under the door. I will sign and return them.” (No signature.) * * * * * I was disappointed, not distrustful. I had expected to meet Miss Tennant, of whom so much was being said and written. It was a lonesome walk back to my hotel. I did not care to visit the club and did not wish to talk, so I dropped into a Methodist meeting at St. James’s Hall, heard the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes give a great crowd a real Calvinistic lashing, and then dined at the Café Royal, alone and gloomy and homesick. Reaching my hotel at ten o’clock I found a package in a large envelope waiting for me. It was the contract I had drawn up and left at Stanley’s apartments, duly signed by Henry M. Stanley. It was for one hundred lectures, more or less, in America, to begin in New York, Tuesday, November 11, 1890. Not an alteration of any kind or a word of suggestion was made.