their cards up.  I said:  “Tell them to wait until morning.”  I prayed over the matter nearly all night and before day all seemed settled. (This was a test to try my faith.) The cloud was lifted and I told Mr. Cook to tell the men that a “million a minute would not catch me.”  My dear friends especially Mrs. Goodwin, Dr. Eva Harding and others used their influence to have Stanley, the governor pardon me, this he refused to do, the joint-keepers were those he favored more than me.

I had never thought of going before the public as a lecturer.  I knew those people only wanted me as they would a white elephant.  I did not at this time see the stage as a missionary field.

At this time I was entirely out of means, was in debt and the duns I got while in jail were a terrible trouble to me.  The ten cents I got for my bread and milk came in almost daily for copies of my papers.  I paid my milkman sometimes in stamps.

I never wanted to get out of jail so badly in my life, as I did at this time, when the offers to make engagements were so many.  Two days after the New York managers were there, I got a letter from James E. Furlong, a Lyceum Manager of Rochester, N. Y., who had managed Patti and many of the great singers.  He told me if I would give him “some dates”, he would assist me in getting out of jail.  I hardly knew what he meant by “dates”.  Mrs. Goodwin of Topeka called to see me, I showed the letter to her and asked what this man meant by “dates?” She said:  “He may want you to lecture or you could tell of your experience.”

“I wonder if the people would like to hear me, I can tell my experience,” I said.  I asked her to tell Mr. Duminel, my lawyer, to come to my cell.  I told him of it, and he said he would call the commissioners together and would have them let me out by paying my fines by monthly installments.  This he did.  So Mr. Furlong sent the money needed and Dr. Harding and Mrs. Goodwin collected seventy dollars from my friends to help me out.  When I got to Kansas City, I lacked fifty cents of having enough money to pay for my ticket east, so I borrowed that of the man at the fruit stand in the depot.  In about a week from that I spoke at Atlantic City for the Philadelphia American, the proceeds being used to give the poor children an outing.  Thousands of people were present.  I never made a note or wrote a sentence for the platform in my life.  Have spoken extemporaneously from the first and often went on the platform when I could not have told what I was to say to save my life, and for several weeks God compelled me to open my Bible at random and speak from what my eyes fell on.  I have literally proved that:  “You shall not think of what you shall speak but it shall be given in that hour.”  The best thoughts have come to me after being asleep, waking in the night or in the morning.

The way I happened to think of a hatchet as a souvenir, some one brought me one and told me I ought to carry them.  I then selected a pattern and got a party in Providence, R. I., to make them.  These have been a great financial aid to me; helped me pay my fines and expenses.  People have often bought them from me, at my prison cell window.  I sell them everywhere I go.