“_GREAT is the responsibility!_ of the publishing a book, especially in _this_ case where the publishers, a MONTH BEFORE THE BOOK IS PUBLISHED! HAVE SOLD! 250,000 COPIES THEREOF! An unprecedented occurrence in the history of LITERATURE!” (the capitals, italics, and astonishers are mine.--J. B. P.).--_“The Pathway of Life,” Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage._ “It is not to illustrate any heroic achievements of a man, but to vindicate a just and beneficent principle, in its application to the whole human family, by letting in a light of truth upon a system esteemed by some as a blessing, and by others as a curse and a crime.”--_“My Bondage and Freedom,” Frederick Douglass._ * * * * * “Look in the hearts of average men; The tragedies of doom are there, And comedies of glad delight, And hopeless wailings of despair, And hopes and sorrows infinite-- Shall not a poet now and then Look in the hearts of average men?” --_“Waifs from Wild Meadows,” Sam Walter Foss._ FIRST QUESTION ANSWERED. My friends often ask how I got into the Lyceum business. I drifted into it, the same as most people do who have to find some place for which they are fitted, or try to. It was my fortune to be raised on the frontier. My father was one of the pioneers of Wisconsin. He was an abolitionist. The Bible and the New York “_Trybune_,” not _Tribune_, were almost synonymous in our family, and about the only library we had. Wisconsin was a sort of refuge for the fugitive slave, and my father kept an underground station. Many a night I have slept out on the prairie with some runaway slaves, with father and the neighbors protecting them against the United States marshal. I found myself, when eighteen years of age, carrying a Sharp’s rifle in 1856 with John Brown, in Kansas. I was between thirteen and fourteen when, after my father had given me a severe drubbing for telling a lie, which was not a lie, I ran away. Then I was in Fond du Lac. I remember the wooden sidewalks, and seeing boys wearing shoes in the summer time. How I pitied them; I thought it dreadful! I was looking at the wonder scenes, gazing with intense interest into the shop windows. All of a sudden I heard a noise in a shop. I looked in. It was a printing office. It was so wonderful I ventured to step inside the door. Just then the man working the press (who proved to be the foreman) said to me, “Well, what do you want?” I replied, “Nothing,” and stepped back. He said, “Don’t you want to learn the trade?” “Don’t know, sir.” “Don’t you want to be a printer’s devil?” At that I was still more frightened. He said: “You see the editor in that sanctum--” Just then a man came to the door from an adjoining room and spoke very gently to me. _I never forgot that._ He said, “I want an apprentice to learn the printer’s trade. Would you like to try? I will give you $25 for the first year, $30 for the second, and $50 for the third.” I agreed.