Somehow the man became the fashion, the rage. He was the Caucasian Booker Washington. Everybody having agreed that he was a wonderful man, the ball kept on rolling by the law of inertia. Nobody could tell you wherein he was great; nobody could quote anything remarkable from his writings or his sermons; nobody knew of anything phenomenal that he had done, or was supposed to be able to do. His capacity for the benevolent assimilation of an indefinite number of voluntary donations was strikingly like Booker Washington’s power in the same direction; but beyond the fact that Talmage preached to a large congregation, and wrote books which many people read, his greatness was hard to define. * * * * * However, Talmage had his day. He was the fashion. At home and abroad he was a man whom it was the correct thing to treat with distinguished consideration. Foreign potentates, princes and powers knew Talmage as a mighty man of the pen; likewise as a man of infinite capacity for talk; also as a man who traveled with a photographic outfit. Consequently a man to be handled with care; “this side up,” as it were. His progress through a foreign land, was not merely an incident; it was an event. He was greeted with dress-parade formalities. Foreign princes, potentates and powers _knew_ that Talmage would write a book about them when he got home; that the book would be read by hundreds of thousands; that public opinion would be influenced by it; and that the photographs of the princes, etc., would appear in the book. Consequently the smiling faces which were turned toward the Talmage Camera by the helpless potentates etc., were almost distressing in their laborious amiability. * * * * * As to Russia, Doctor Talmage seems to have gone there by imperial invitation and prearrangement. “Stepping from the Moscow train on returning to St. Petersburg, an invitation was put in my hand inviting me to the palace.... I had already seen the Crown Prince in his palace.... The royal carriage was waiting, and the two decorated representatives of the palace took me to a building where a suite of three rooms was appointed me, where I rested, lunched, examined the flowers and walked under the trees.” Then the royal carriage came again, took him through the magnificent and beautiful grounds to the palace of the Czar. During his stay, officials crowded around him, lavished attentions upon him, stuffed his ears with glowing accounts of the lovely conditions prevailing in Russia, and made Doctor Talmage feel good generally. Russian autocracy laid itself out to capture Talmage, and it captured him completely.