Mr. Smith called on me one morning. I was somewhat under the weather, having been ill for some time. He asked me if I had heard of George Kennan. I told him I had known more or less of Mr. Kennan; that he had been a lecturer in a small way before he went to Siberia. Mr. Smith told me that Kennan’s articles, he believed, had more than doubled the circulation of the magazine, and that one or two editions had already been exhausted and they were obliged to reproduce them. He suggested that I secure Mr. Kennan for some lectures, and gave me his address. [Illustration] I immediately wrote him asking if he would lecture, and got a favorable reply. I also sent out “feelers” to my customers, and to my surprise applications came pouring in from all parts of the country. I saw that success was almost certain, and proposed to Mr. Kennan a certain sum of money for two hundred lectures. I offered him $100 a lecture--$20,000 for two hundred lectures--and to pay all of his expenses, which he accepted. It was the season of 1889 and 1890. Mr. Kennan was in wretched health during the entire tour, devoting his nights to writing letters and sending his earnings to the poor Siberian exiles whom he had known in that country. He was loaded down, and almost broken down, with sympathy for the poor people, whose cause he was so ably championing in this country. But notwithstanding all of his other work, Mr George Kennan travelled and lectured two hundred consecutive secular nights, travelling almost every day. Not an audience was disappointed nor a railroad connection missed. Mr. Kennan cleared $20,000 that season from his lectures. The next season he did a very handsome business, and could have been much more popular had it not been for the revolting stories he told of the wretched condition of those suffering Siberian exiles. Many of his stories were heart-sickening, and for that reason, I believe, more than any other, he is not to-day the most popular lecturer in America. His excellent voice, charm of manner, and grace of diction are all that is best in a platform speaker. Frederick Villiers, war artist, can lay claim to a more varied experience in the field than perhaps any of his fellows. The intimate friend of Archibald Forbes in seven campaigns, the fourth man in the quartette of war artists that followed the Russian army to the gates of Constantinople, he has also done service in Afghanistan, in Egypt, in the Soudan, in Servia, in Burmah; and everywhere he has been in the thickest of the fight. [Illustration]