Mr. Holmes has been asked to supply data for a biographical sketch. He replies that his biography will be found in his lectures, each lecture being a chapter from his life of travel. Thirty chapters of this autobiography appear in these volumes,—thirty preliminary chapters,—for Mr. Holmes hopes that his life of travel is but just begun.

Elias Burton Holmes was born in Chicago in January, 1870, inheriting a love for travel. In 1883 he acquired a love for photography. In 1886 he traveled abroad and took pictures. He has been traveling and taking pictures ever since. In 1890 he appeared before his first audience,—the members of the Chicago Camera Club, reading and illustrating an account of a tour "Through Europe with a Camera." In 1893 he made his first professional appearance in the recital hall of the Auditorium, Chicago, describing a journey to Japan. Kind friends and curious acquaintances insured the success of this venture, and encouraged Mr. Holmes to enter upon a career in which the labor has been a labor of love. For five successive winters the Burton Holmes Lectures were among the features of the amusement season in the cities of the Middle West. In 1897, on the retirement of Mr. John L. Stoddard from the field which he had created and occupied for nineteen years, Mr. Holmes found himself prepared to carry on the work begun by Mr. Stoddard.

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