Yet the papers the next morning, much to my surprise, were not very complimentary of Mr. Zangwill’s criticism, and when Zangwill and I met to join Hall Caine and Judge Sulzburger, with whom we were to lunch that day at the Waldorf, he wore about as dejected an expression as I have ever seen. Mr. Caine’s play “The Christian” was receiving very vigorous treatment at the hands of the New York papers about this time, and when he and Mr. Zangwill met at the lunch table, I think Judge Sulzburger must have noticed that the two men were in so chopfallen and dejected a state of mind that they might have put pepper in their coffee instead of sugar without ever having known the difference. If the reporters could have heard that little interchange of opinions of the American press from two such brilliant minds, their story would have delighted the general public if not the journalists themselves. I had little difficulty in booking Zangwill. After New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, he went to Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, and Memphis; from there to Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, and back to New York, making a succession of the longest rides that ever a lecturer attempted in this country. Everywhere Zangwill met big crowds, and his audiences were delighted. On his return in November he gave a series of three lectures in the Waldorf-Astoria; but the newspapers had succeeded in creating a prejudice against the speaker, and these lectures were very poorly attended. I booked him for a Sunday night in Boston, and there was a large advance sale up to the Friday evening before the lecture. Then came a blizzard, and not another ticket was sold until the night of the lecture, when only $2 was taken in at the box office. It was one of the historic blizzards of Boston. The advance sale had been $480 up to Friday, and Sunday night it was swelled to $482, but very few of the people who had purchased tickets in advance were able to get to the theatre. Arrangements were made for another Sunday night in Boston three weeks later, but the public proposed to wait until the night came before buying their tickets, as many of them had been disappointed on the last occasion. On the Saturday before this Sunday another blizzard set in. Mr. Zangwill was on hand and filled the bill, but the house was empty. Nobody could get there. Mr. Zangwill and I had rented the theatre and were speculating. Our loss was about $80, but Mr. Zangwill wrote me a letter declaring he thought he must have been the Jonah on this occasion, and insisted on paying all the loss out of his own pocket. The two leading Jewish clubs in New York, the Harmony Social and the Freundschaft, each paid him $500 for a lecture on Sunday evening, and I don’t believe Mr. Zangwill or anybody else ever faced a more cultivated or appreciative audience than on these occasions.