After trying the old style of canvassing, that is, personally taking orders from door to door and returning at a future day to make deliveries and collections, I struck on one of the most elaborate schemes for working the portrait business that had ever been introduced. The idea was probably suggested by my meeting, as I had done more than once before, with a party of stranded people of the theatrical profession. In the summer-time you are apt to run across the very best kind of people who are out of an engagement, or who may have been left behind by an absconding manager of a “snap” company, which they had joined in default of anything better to do until the regular fall season opened. After thinking the matter over for a day or two, and arranging my plans, I formed a company consisting of eight people, all of them musicians and actors. I got some printing done, and ordered more, and started out on the road to work my business in opera houses or large halls. I had with me, also, a superior artist. During the day, by way of advertising, the band would give open air concerts, at times when they were not otherwise engaged, and in the evening there was a grand, free entertainment in the opera house. Between the acts I made a talk from the stage, exhibited specimens of work by the aid of the “oxo-hydrogen lime light,” and solicited business. I took the orders, finished the pictures, delivered and collected, all before leaving the city. I paid the expenses of my troupe and had them canvass during the day, paying them an additional ten per cent. upon all the orders they secured. It was immense. Up to about this time the large, framed portrait was a rarity, and in every vicinity there were hundreds of people with small pictures of their relatives or themselves, which, with the proper working, they discovered they wanted to possess in an enlarged form. In those towns or cities which I visited (and, of course, with such an aggregation to support, I selected only the larger towns), I made my business quite the fashionable folly or fad, and many a ten dollars was, no doubt, expended just to keep in with the swim. I heightened the interest in half a dozen ways, and for a time certainly met with all the success I had anticipated. Sometimes I came to the rescue of a struggling congregation, which wanted to buy a new organ, or square up the preacher’s salary, or raise money for some other purpose. I remember, at Haddam City, I raffled off two large oil paintings, advertised as worth two hundred and fifty dollars. I had used them as drawing cards, placing side by side with them reduced copies, to show the possibilities of our art. On starting the raffle I made the most glowing announcement from the stage. I explained that I had found these works of art too bulky to carry with me from town to town. They were so valuable that it required more care to protect them from injury than we could afford to give.