A travelogue is simply a talk on travel, or on a country, illustrated with pictures of some kind.

To be able to give a travel talk does not mean necessarily that you must have traveled or been in the country you are going to tell about but if you have done neither, it does mean that you must read up on it.

To do this get several good books on whatever country you intend to talk on, read them carefully, and then outline a route just as though you had gone over it yourself, but this must of course conform to the pictures you can get.

Now there are four methods you can follow to show a series of pictures and you can make your choice according to the amount of money you want to invest in it.

(1) The first and least expensive way is to cut a dozen or twenty pictures out of magazines, arrange them according to your route and build up your talk around them. As you describe each place pass the pictures, which should be mounted on cardboard, in turn to each person present.

(2) A better way is to get a set of stereographs of the trip or the country you are to talk on and a stereoscope 119 and pass the picture showing the view and the instrument to each person present.

Each stereograph, as the picture is called, is formed of two pictures of the same scene made from slightly different viewpoints and when the observer looks through the lenses at them they blend into one image when the scene stands out wonderfully clear and apparently in three dimensions. The only drawback of the stereoscope as an aid to a travel talk is that only one person can look at a picture at a time.

(3) A far better plan than either of the above schemes is to make a reflectoscope 120 as described in the chapter called Some Kinks in Photography. You can show any kind of a picture in a reflectoscope if it is not larger than 3 x 5 inches but picture postcards are especially good to use for a travelogue or a talk of any kind and they show up nicely when thrown on a screen with a reflectoscope.

(4) Finally either make, or better, if you can afford it, buy, a magic lantern 121 that will take the regular

119 A stereoscope and the stereograms can be bought from Underwood and Underwood, 417 Fifth Ave., New York, or Sears, Roebuck and Co., Chicago, Ill.

120 You can buy one of the Busch and Lomb Optical Company, Rochester, New York, and you can get post-card views for it of the Post-Card Store, 946 Broadway, New York.

121 For magic lanterns and slides address the Charles Beseler Co., 131 East 23rd Street, New York.

full size lantern slides, namely, 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches square. Sets of lantern slides122 for travelogues or talks on any subject can be rented cheaply and in these days of cheap electricity you can throw a picture on the screen so big and bright and real that your offering is bound to be a success.