“I look over my old note books of last year, and it hardly seems possible that I could ever have been the talking-piece of baggage that was sent flying over the country for six months to be wound up every day at the same hour. This is a good deal more comfortable, my friend, and there is less wear and tear on one’s throat and good clothes--not to mention one’s temper and digestion. All the same, I am glad I did it once, and saw the country from end to end and from top to bottom, and with a man who knows the West as you do. But if we ever do it again, I shall take a patent reversible india-rubber coffin which can be used as a bath, overcoat, or pulpit, and can be hermetically sealed so as to bring the lecturer home on ice from the point at which he dies! “Well--I am all right again, thank goodness! Whatever you do, my friend, _never let_ your lecturer go and visit the smelting furnaces in Colorado. That was the beginning of my trouble, and you were not there on that day to prevent me from going. “We had a little earthquake here not long ago--a sort of little kitten earthquake--but it made me think of that evening in San Francisco, when the house rocked and the boy dropped the cheese into the ice box and ran! That was a good supper, well shaken down--we shall probably never digest another so quickly. “I have discovered that the wicked Emperor Tiberius was left-handed--you and I are in good company. “This is just a Christmas greeting--a little less than a lecture, a little more than an autograph, from “Your friend and old lecturer, “F. MARION CRAWFORD.” * * * * * Gen. Lew Wallace has made three distinct and creditable reputations, as a soldier in the war for the Union, as a lawyer and orator, and as an author. As a State lawyer and political speaker, he is confessedly one of the most distinguished at the bar and on the stump of Indiana. As a novelist, he has made one of the most brilliant successes of late years. His “Ben Hur” had only one rival in popularity in America--“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” As a lecturer, he has proved one of the best attractions in the lyceum, and his popularity is increasing. [Illustration] After the success of “Ben Hur” he was called for from all parts of the land, especially by the Young Men’s Christian Associations. I don’t know that anybody has been in so much demand since Gough’s time for these societies as General Wallace. After two or three years of earnest effort I succeeded in getting him to make a tour of one hundred lectures. The General was a pessimist in regard to lecturing. He did not think the people cared to hear him, and to some extent he was right.