It was a general tour, and Mr. Peary visited most of the large cities,
two lectures a day. It was a great combination. Of all the tours I ever
had the pleasure of managing none met with greater success on a short
notice than this one. The profits for those few weeks were about
$18,000. Yet Mr. Peary was disappointed, for he was fitting out a second
Arctic expedition and needed something like $80,000 for his scheme. He
admitted that under any other circumstances he would have considered the
tour one of the most successful in the world, but because he could not
make $2,000 or $3,000 a day it seemed a loss of time to him, and he was
obliged to resort to other means to raise the funds that he needed.
However, Mr. Peary never once complained, I never heard him speak an
unkind word either to the employees or to his dogs. He is a great
worker. His stenographer and typewriter accompanied him, and he carried
on an immense correspondence, together with his other work, perfecting
all plans for his expedition.
He met with many misfortunes on the second expedition of twenty-five
months’ stay in North Greenland in 1893-95, and his return to the
lecture field proved not very remunerative. No doubt this was partly due
to the fact that he undertook to give simply illustrated lectures,
without the dogs and the other attractions which he had on the previous
tour.
[Illustration]
Mr. Peary is one of the finest descriptive lecturers we have ever had,
with his heart and soul in his work. If he succeeds in reaching the Pole
(which we shall probably know before this book goes to press), then he
will be the biggest attraction in the world. Otherwise, he will be
classed as one of the great Arctic heroes who did his best and knows how
to relate the accounts of his heroic adventures to as many auditors as
still retain interest in Arctic explorations. Peary is a
nineteenth-century hero, and will continue to push on because he cannot
stop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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