President was stopping at the Metropolitan Hotel, in lower Broadway, and
as he looked out of the stage-window the sign "Metropolitan Hotel"
stared him in the face. In a moment he was out of the stage; he wrote a
little note, asked the clerk to send it to Mr. Davis, and within five
minutes was talking to the Confederate President and telling of his
remarkable evening.

Mr. Davis was keenly interested in the coincidence and in the boy before
him. He asked about the famous collection, and promised to secure for
Edward a letter written by each member of the Confederate Cabinet. This
he subsequently did. Edward remained with Mr. Davis until ten o'clock,
and that evening brought about an interchange of letters between the
Brooklyn boy and Mr. Davis at Beauvoir, Mississippi, that lasted until
the latter passed away.

Edward was fast absorbing a tremendous quantity of biographical
information about the most famous men and women of his time, and he was
compiling a collection of autograph letters that the newspapers had made
famous throughout the country. He was ruminating over his possessions
one day, and wondering to what practical use he could put his
collection; for while it was proving educative to a wonderful degree, it
was, after all, a hobby, and a hobby means expense. His autograph quest
cost him stationery, postage, car-fare--all outgo. But it had brought
him no income, save a rich mental revenue. And the boy and his family
needed money. He did not know, then, the value of a background.

He was thinking along this line in a restaurant when a man sitting next
to him opened a box of cigarettes, and taking a picture out of it threw
it on the floor. Edward picked it up, thinking it might be a "prospect"
for his collection of autograph letters. It was the picture of a
well-known actress. He then recalled an advertisement announcing that
this particular brand of cigarettes contained, in each package, a
lithographed portrait of some famous actor or actress, and that if the
purchaser would collect these he would, in the end, have a valuable
album of the greatest actors and actresses of the day. Edward turned the
picture over, only to find a blank reverse side. "All very well," he
thought, "but what does a purchaser have, after all, in the end, but a
lot of pictures? Why don't they use the back of each picture, and tell
what each did: a little biography? Then it would be worth keeping." With
his passion for self-education, t