Yes, I remember, I met you last season at several vaudeville houses throughout the country. We were filling engagements at the same time when the fire broke out in Cook's. Haven't forgotten? Neither have I. No, I don't believe that I will try the larger cities this time. Country stands will suit me first rate. I was not discreet enough last season, and during the hottest weather I spend my vacation on a Wisconsin stump farm, one of the best nurseries on earth for horse flies and mosquitoes!

I intended to take in the season at Long Beach and Santa Barbara, but a man can't do that and live the way a vaudeville star tries to live!

Yes, I believe that the country is good enough for me. A man will lose his worth in time if he doesn't get out and do some hustling himself. I will admit, there are two straight hours of talking and action, but, then, when you have squared an insignificant hotel bill and met your other small obligations, the receipts are yours, and that is a good deal if the show is run on right lines. I will keep my two boys with me and make one and two night and week stands my specialty this season.

Harry and Albert did their turns at the museums this last summer and took but a couple of week's rest. I will have to raise them to ten a week, I guess, for they can make twice that at the museums, but they like the country air better, and so do I.

Now, figuring all things, there is a great deal of satisfaction in breathing air that is not poluted with smoke and germs wafted from the Ghetto, the levee, the stock yards, et al! A heap of satisfaction if a man or a woman knows how to appreciate life. I will not put on any mind-reading turn and then it will be easy. There is no need of killing one's self for the sake of popularity. What is being popular, anyway? Why, look at here, it should make an ordinary mortal swell an inch to know that, from the moment he strikes the little town of five or six thousand, every-body is sizing him up, from the retired merchant to the innocent schoolboy. He has not stepped into the bus before there are a dozen strange stories of his life and powers circulating about the streets. If a man ever competed with a whole circus that man is a country professor of hypnotism; or, to be more considerate, the professor in a country town. It takes a well made head not to swell during the first few weeks, and then, well then, he, this much lauded professor, settles down to the sacred opinion that he is the whole Solar System, and the waiting, breathless world merely awaiting his arrival at various points! Now, to be honest, this is the case. But, to the man or the woman who would play wisely. I wish to call your attention to a few facts:

The hypnotist is a power in his country tour if he knows how to be a power. He must be clever, mysterious and polite. If he is a gentleman, that great body, the commercial travelers, will give him more good, substantial advertising than all the paper he has put out. But if he is unpardonably poor he will never be able to meet his obligations at two dollars per day. This is a sermon.

As a professional hypnotist, I say "Bless the traveling men." They are the best fellows on earth. They scatter more sunshine and more free advertising than all your advance men could ever do.

Yes, I admit, the long-distance - we call it the "toll" in town - telephone does its quota of good or bad work. I have known of shows to go out of commission simply because they were indiscrete enough to play along a route that was strung with copper wire!

But that is not the traveling man. It may chance that some wily knight of the grip will read these nice things and these deep-dyed plots, but he will say a fervent "Amen" and bless the profession of stage hypnotists.

If you see a traveling man hanging 'round on the day of your arrival, get acquainted with him. Manage to know somebody, somewhere that he knows; or, if that won't do, strike up the theme of popular resorts; give him Palm Garden talk and he is your friend. The first thing you know, you have given him a ticket and then a couple more and have passed a merry hour in the exchange of friendly confidences. The small boys will, undoubtedly, have managed to step on your toes and will have posed with wide open countenances at your wonderful revelations. But I really never did see a "Prof." or a traveling man who could not tolerate that, inasmuch as they both were boys with boyish aspirations at one time.

And never miss giving a traveling man a ticket or two if you can get him limbered up enough. Be social as far as possible and he will do the rest. That verv afternoon when he has landed the "Cross Roads Mercantile and Provision Company" for a $187 order, he will tell Mr. Jenkins, the business manager, that you, Prof. So-and-So, are the most wonderful man that ever gave a somnambulist a cruel look! And Mr. Jenkins will drop around to the drug store and buy four tickets. As soon as his partner and help know it - and he will incidentally tell them! - they will do likewise - except the boy who pulls nails out of boxes. He will hang 'round and get into the gallery if there is one, and you have landed fully a dozen paid people through the influence of that traveling man. In fact, it is safe to say that you will land ten dollars' worth of business through his recommendation of vou. In Blankville, they know him and his word is law, because he travels out of Chicago, you know, and Chicago is a "big town!"

Yes, to be sure, I would rather have the traveling men with me than any other set. They will tell about you on trains, they will dentally mention you in hotel lobbies, and they run things right your way. Be good to the traveling men and you will never lose.

There is a great deal in these little things. There is nothing like being popular in the country; it is a whole lot cheaper than being unpopular and the returns are many times greater. Indeed, there is much to this profession. It differs materially from the theatrical business and yet it can. in a way, be classed therewith. The commercial side is a highly important subject. I have known many a good hypnotist to fail to make a winning simply because he was crude and unschooled in the ways of the world and in handling the public. I have found that he who can tell the people just what he has and then shows them that it is good, is he who succeeds.

"SLEEP SOUND asleep!".